ROGERS -- A stairwell lighted in different colors for each floor will act as a light tower at a new children's hospital in Springdale and make it easier to spot.
"If a family is frantic to get there, seeing this is like a beacon," said Kim Dutton, development director for the Arkansas Children's Hospital campus for Northwest Arkansas. "And for a kid, it looks like a big lifesaver. They want to go there."
Arkansas Children’s Northwest
Hospital will include:
• 24 inpatient beds
• 30 emergency department rooms
• 5 operating rooms
• 30 clinic rooms
Source: Arkansas Children’s Hospital
Dutton shared an update on the look and feel of the hospital Thursday during a Benton County Community Coalition meeting.
The hospital is under construction on 37 acres in Springdale directly off of Interstate 49 between the Don Tyson Parkway and Sunset Avenue exits. It is set to open in January 2018.
Large windows in waiting rooms will face Arvest Ballpark, where families will be able to spot ballgames and concerts from afar. A number of green spaces will be incorporated into the campus, including a meditation garden, places to eat outside, an outdoor chapel and a one-mile walking trail, Dutton said.
Dutton estimates that 70 percent of children in Northwest Arkansas are within a 30-minute drive of the hospital site, and she expects the facility to serve 200,000 children in 11 nearby counties once it opens.
The hospital will employ more than 300 people, she said.
"It will open up so many jobs," Quinta Henry, a registered nurse for the Benton County Health Department, said during Thursday's meeting. "I know a lot of people who love to work with kids, but because of the population and the need of nurses in hospitals, that's a very small opportunity.
"But the opportunity to be with kids and impact them is great."
The creation of the Northwest Arkansas location illustrates Arkansas Children's Hospital's mission to become a statewide network that provides services all over Arkansas, Dutton said.
"We're one of the busiest outpatient hospitals in the country. We had 400,000 visits last year," she said of the main hospital in Little Rock. As for becoming a statewide network, "in Northwest Arkansas that means having a brick-and-mortar [location]. For smaller areas, the solution is tougher."
Northwest Arkansas was chosen for a permanent structure because it met the population density mark of 70 children per square mile that the hospital uses to identify areas needing services the most, she said.
Areas with smaller populations, such as El Dorado, will receive mobile and in-school clinics and make use of telemedicine, which is treatment that occurs when a health care professional uses audio and visual technology to examine a patient at a different site.
Upon opening, the Northwest Arkansas hospital will become a licensed facility that is separate from the Little Rock hospital, Dutton said. Rather than reporting to the Little Rock hospital, it will be under the umbrella of NWA Children's Inc.
Children who are critically ill or need extended hospital visits will still make trips to the Little Rock hospital, Dutton said.
The northwest campus also won't house a neonatal intensive-care unit because area hospitals offer the service. The new site is meant to enhance, rather than compete with, the medical service offerings of the region, she said.
Metro on 07/01/2016