Welcome to the new newsletter including ALL Emergency Departments of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. This newsletter now includes collaboration from the Emergency Department of Scottish Rite. The information included in this newsletter combines the efforts of the two largest groups of pediatric emergency medicine physicians in the Atlanta Metro area.  The Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Emory University and Pediatric Emergency Medicine Associates (PEMA). Emory Physicians staff the Hughes Spalding and Egleston EDs while PEMA physicians staff Scottish Rite and 7 other pediatric emergency departments throughout the metro area including one hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  We are continuing to expand our outreach and collaborative efforts to all metro Atlanta area physicians who care for children including Emergency Medicine, Pediatric and Family Medicine Physicians.  Please feel free to forward this newsletter link to your colleagues. Don’t hold onto this valuable information pass it on. Sometimes with growing and merging  we can experience some delays thus we recognize this newsletter is delayed in publication.  Stay tuned in the next few months as our website will move to a new location and we will be offering continuing medical education.  Also check out this article on Medbytes-Partnering to Improve Pediatric Emergency Medicine Care here is the link that is accessible to those with md portal access-https://md.choa.org/articles/2017/07/20/ed-partnership-fraser-doh.

Please enjoy this quarter’s newsletter articles on summer safety tips and new  information on the effects of acetaminophen. Finally, see below the history of PEM (Pediatric Emergency Medicine) in Atlanta including the history of Emory Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Pediatric Emergency Medicine Associates.

The Story of Pediatric Emergency Medicine in Atlanta

By Thuy Bui thuy.bui@pemaweb.com

By Wendy Little
wendalyn.little@emory.edu

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is one of the largest and busiest pediatric healthcare systems in the United States. The three CHOA emergency departments collectively encounter over 220,000 visits per year and the hospitals, with their full complement of pediatric subspecialty providers, care for some of the sickest and most medically complex patients in the state and the region.

While specialized pediatric healthcare in Atlanta dates back to the early 1900s, there were no pediatric emergency departments and no pediatric emergency specialists in Atlanta until the mid-1980’s.  The growth of emergency medical care for children in Atlanta over the past 30 years has been phenomenal!

The first children’s hospital in Atlanta, Scottish Rite Convalescent Home for Crippled Children, opened its doors in 1915. Key movers behind this included orthopedic surgeon Dr. Michael Hoke (the hospital’s first medical director), philanthropist Mrs. “Bertie” Wardlaw, real estate developer Mr. Forrest Adair and the Scottish Rite Masons.  The hospital started out as two rented cottages in Decatur with 20 beds and became a full medical building housing 50 beds in 1919.  The medical facility stayed in Decatur until 1976 when it moved to its current seven-acre site in North Atlanta and became Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital.

The Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children was founded in 1928.  Thomas R. Egleston Jr, a wealthy Atlantan, left money in his will for the founding of a children’s hospital to be named after his mother, Henrietta Egleston. The first Egleston hospital was located in Atlanta on what is now Ralph Magill Avenue.  In 1956 , Emory University donated land for an expanded facility on the Emory campus, thus beginning the long-standing relationship between Emory University and Egleston. The “new” Egleston Children’s Hospital on Clifton Road opened in 1959.

Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) is a relatively new specialty with the first fellowship established in 1980.  The first board subspecialty exam, a collaboration of the American Board of Pediatrics and American Board of Emergency Medicine, was administered in 1992.  In 1998, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship became an accredited specialty.  There are just over 1700 Pediatric Emergency Medicine board certified physicians in the country and 68 in the State of Georgia.

Pediatric emergency medicine became available to the children of Atlanta in 1984. Pediatric emergency medicine pioneer, Dr. Joseph Simon, opened Atlanta’s first freestanding pediatric emergency department at Scottish Rite. It was comprised of eight exam rooms with one trauma bay and staffed by a group of four pediatric trained physicians doing 24 hour shifts.  During its first full year of operation, the department saw 5,000 patients. That same year, Egleston opened its Acute Treatment Area. It had two exam rooms and a four bed holding area. It was initially open for 9 hours overnight on weekdays and 24 hours per day on weekends, and saw approximately 8800 patients per year.  Patients could not walkin to the facility, but had to be referred by a physician. A formal emergency department opened in 1988 with 24-hour physician coverage. In 1986, Egleston was designated as a pediatric trauma center with Scottish Rite receiving its designation the following year.

The Hughes Spalding Pavilion opened in 1952 as a private hospital on the campus of Grady Memorial Hospital. Until 1992, pediatric patients were first seen in a 24-hour walk-in clinic on the second floor of Grady, staffed mainly by Emory pediatric residents. Seeing over 60,000 patients per year, wait times were notoriously long, with patients routinely waiting over 12 hours to be seen.  In 1992 , Hughes Spalding was re-opened as a dedicated pediatric facility, including an emergency department consisting of a six-bed observation room, an asthma room with chairs to accommodate approximately 10 patients, three private emergency department rooms, an urgent care/clinic area and a single resuscitation room. In 2006, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta assumed clinical operations at Hughes Spalding.

In 1998, to help preserve and improve pediatric health care in the region, Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital and Egleston Children’s Healthcare System officially merged to become Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.  With its assumption of responsibility at Hughes Spalding Children’s Hospital in 2006, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta became one of the largest pediatric healthcare systems in the country.  Currently, the system’s three emergency departments (Egleston, Hughes Spalding, and Scottish Rite) manage more than 220,000 patient visits per year.

Each of the emergency departments has undergone major changes over the years. Today CHOA Egleston has 36 private patient rooms (including dedicated beds  for orthopedic and gynecologic care, as well as mental health rooms with video-monitoring capability) and four trauma bays, caring for more than 70,000 patients a year. In 2009,  CHOA Egleston became the first and only Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center in the state of Georgia. Similarly CHOA Scottish Rite has 50 private patient rooms (including rooms dedicated for orthopedic and gynecologic care, and mental health rooms with video-monitoring capability) and four trauma bays. Designated as a Level 2 Pediatric Trauma Center, it now provides care for over 100,000 patients annually. CHOA Hughes Spalding underwent a major renovation in 2010. The updated facility includes a new emergency department with 32 private rooms (including rooms designated for orthopedic and gynecologic care, as well as mental health rooms with video-monitoring capability) and one resuscitation room, and provides care for more than 52,000 patients annually.

The variety of options and easy accessibility of pediatric emergency medicine care make Atlanta unique. This validates the need for all 3 Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta hospitals to collaborate and reach out to referring partners in the community and work together to improve children’s health in our community. The universal theme that joins us in our diversity of roles and practice is that we are dedicated to making all children better today and healthier tomorrow.