How Cleveland Clinic Children’s New Home Will Improve Care for the Youngest Patients

In 2018, a newly remodeled, four-story building on Euclid Avenue will become the new home for Cleveland Clinic Children’s. In this Q&A, Chairman Giovanni Piedimonte, MD, explains how this new, free-standing building will improve care for patients and referring physicians.

Q: Why is children’s healthcare so important?

A: President John F. Kennedy said it best when he said: “Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.” He said those words in 1963. Today, they resonate even louder because we now know beyond any reasonable doubt that most adult disease originates from events occurring during gestation or in the first months after birth.

If we really want to prevent rather than cure, it is essential that we intervene early in life, before it’s too late to eliminate the cause. Then, all we can do is manage the symptoms, at great cost to the community.

Q: What distinguishes Cleveland Clinic Children’s from other children’s hospitals?

A: Cleveland Clinic Children’s is fully integrated into one of the very best hospitals in the world. It shares the same culture that has made Cleveland Clinic a special place over the past almost-century: patient first, working as a unit and the relentless pursuit of perfection in delivering world-class care.

The continuing growth of healthcare for women and children at Cleveland Clinic makes it possible to deliver the same excellent care along a continuum, starting at gestation and encompassing all stages of life.

Q: Why and how will this building make already great care better?

A: First, it will allow us to consolidate services that are currently scattered across five different buildings. This means our young patients and their families will be able to have all of their healthcare needs met by a coordinated, efficient and comprehensive model, without having to leave the building unless hospitalization or surgery is needed.

Second, it will be easier to make our brand and services known to families in our region and around the country; in other words, it will put a more recognizable “face” on our wonderful caregivers, many of whom are recognized as “Best Doctors” year after year.

Third, it will allow hundreds of doctors, nurses, therapists and other caregivers to work side by side ― interacting, brainstorming, exchanging ideas, knowing each other better and improving their engagement and job satisfaction.

Q: What does this new building mean to you? And what should it mean to patients and their families?

A: This is not only a building, it is an idea, or maybe a dream: the dream to create a unique environment within Cleveland Clinic dedicated to children and their parents, to families.

It also signals the evolution of Cleveland Clinic from a healthcare system primarily dedicated to highly specialized care of adult patients to a fully comprehensive and integrated system with a strong primary care component. With this system, we’re fully prepared to become a model of value-based care and population health.

The hundreds of caregivers working in this building will not only provide the full gamut of primary and specialized clinical services to infants, children and adolescents, but will also educate parents on how to best feed, protect and educate their kids; will train the students, residents and fellows that will care for the next generations; and will conduct cutting-edge basic, translational and clinical research to discover new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for the future.

Q: If you had three things to say about this building and why someone should support it, what would they be?

A: (1) There is no better investment than children, because they own the future, (2) there is nothing more important than our own children, because they are our own future, and (3) there is no better chance to make this world better than making sure that children grow up healthy and ready to build the future.

Supporting this building will help us accomplish all of the above.