Fewer sick and injured children will have to travel out of state for medical care under a program that will bring doctors who specialize in pediatric care to Billings, officials announced Thursday.
Beginning Oct. 1, two pediatric intensivists and one pediatric hospitalist will staff St. Vincent Healthcare every day of the year under a program the hospital is calling St. Vincent Children's Healthcare.
"This is a commitment to the immediate and long-term health of children across our region," St. Vincent Healthcare's chief executive officer, James Paquette, said at a press conference Thursday morning. "Today marks a new day for pediatric health care across our community and state and, really, this region."
St. Vincent has hired a Las Vegas company called the Children's HealthCare Network (CHN) to bring specialists to Billings.
The physicians at first will be CHN travelers, but hospital officials hope that working in Billings will prompt some of them to move here.
"We typically start with traveling doctors, but there is aggressive recruitment in place," CHN president Dr. Curt Pickert said in an interview from California. "The goal is to have doctors who live in Billings."
The Billings medical community has struggled to recruit and retain pediatric specialists, partly because of a nationwide shortage of the doctors and partly because it is hard to persuade a physician to move into an area that does not have an established program.
"It was time for us to get the program here," said Carol Beam, St. Vincent's senior director of business development. "We're going to start off with the best in the industry. This is all they do, all the time."
CHN comprises between 60 and 70 pediatric intensivists and hospitalists, neonatologists and emergency medical physicians who staff hospitals in California, Nevada and Louisiana.
A pediatric intensivist is a pediatrician with extra training in treating children who are in intensive care. A pediatric hospitalist is a pediatrician who treats children in a hospital and not in a clinic setting.
CHN ended a two-year relationship with Community Medical Center in Missoula in 2006. Several factors led to the partnership's demise, none of which will affect the Billings program, Pickert said.
"When we did our homework, we understood there were some challenges in Missoula," Beam said. "I think we learned from that."
A spokeswoman for Community Medical Center did not return calls seeking comment.
The St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation has committed $6 million to the St. Vincent Children's Healthcare effort, which hospital leaders see as a way to strengthen Billings' role as a regional health care hub. About $3 million has been raised.
"All the pediatricians in town sat down and said, 'What element do we need to push pediatrics forward?' " said Dr. Janis Langhor, a pediatrician at The Children's Clinic, an affiliate of St. Vincent. "Everyone universally said pediatric intensive care."
Some 330 Montana children were treated in Colorado last year for serious medical conditions, and Medicaid, the government's health insurance for poor children, pays more money to The Children's Hospital in Denver for Montana patients than it does to any Montana medical center, Beam said.
Under the new program, as many as 75 percent of ill and hurt children who would have been taken out of state for care will be treatable in Billings, officials said.
"We are very encouraged about the prospect of pediatric intensive care specialists coming to Billings," said Dr. Deborah Agnew, Billings Clinic pediatrician and primary care division chief. "They're filling a need in the region and will provide a nice addition to the many pediatric primary care and subspecialty services currently being offered at Billings Clinic, The Children's Clinic and St. Vincent Healthcare."
Treating Montana and Wyoming children in Billings will reduce pressure on families in high-stress situations, said David Irion, executive director of the St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation.
"This doesn't happen in a vacuum," Irion said of medical emergencies involving children. "It happens in the middle of families' lives."
Contact Diane Cochran at dcochran@billingsgazette.com or 657-1287.
