Texas Children's Hospital

Texas Children's Hospital is a nationally ranked, freestanding 973-bed, acute care women's and children's hospital located in Houston, Texas. It is the primary pediatric teaching hospital affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and is located within the Texas Medical Center. The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialty and subspecialty care to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout Texas and features an ACS verified level I pediatric trauma center. Its regional pediatric intensive-care unit and neonatal intensive care units serve the Southern United States region and also has programs to serve children from around the world. With 973 beds, it is the largest children's hospital in the United States.

In addition to its main site in the Texas Medical Center, Texas Children's Hospital has satellite campuses in the suburb of The Woodlands and at its West Campus near Houston's Energy Corridor neighborhood. Texas Children's also has a network of clinics throughout the Houston metropolitan area and maintains partnerships with sites across the world through the Texas Children's Global Health Network.

Texas Children's Hospital is ranked as one of the best children's hospitals in the country and the world. The 2022-2023 edition of '' U.S. News & World Report'' ranked Texas Children's Hospital #2 amongst 200 pediatric hospitals in the nation, and it has been recognized on the ''U.S. News & World Report'' Honor Roll for fourteen consecutive years.

History

In 1940, the Texas Medical Center was first chartered as a set district. Texas Children's Foundation is formed to gain support to build a children's hospital and 6 acres were set aside for the planned hospital. Groundbreaking for the new building was held in May 1951.

As the hospital was being built, hospital leaders established a relationship with the Baylor College of Medicine to allow students to be taught at the new hospital. The original Texas Children's Hospital was planned to have 3 floors and 106 beds.

Texas Children's Hospital was first opened on February 1, 1954, creating the first children's hospital in Texas. From the start in 1954, physician-in-chief Russell Blattner, established a new policy that at least one parent may be with a child during a hospital stay, setting a standard for parental visitation now commonly seen at children's hospitals around the world.

In 1962, Texas Children's Hospital partnered with St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital to open up the Texas Heart Institute. Years later Texas Children's Hospital separated from the Texas Heart Institute instead establishing their own pediatric cardiology program.

Over the years, patient numbers at Texas Children's Hospital continuously increased. The hospital completed a $149-million expansion in 1989 that constructed two new buildings; the West Tower and the Wallace Tower. In addition to the new buildings, the hospital also renovated the main building known as the Abercrombie Building.

On September 21, 1971, the patient known as "Bubble Boy," David Vetter was born at the Texas Children's Hospital. Vetter was immediately placed into a sterile "bubble" because of his SCID diagnosis. The boy lived in the hospital throughout his life before being discharged a few years later. Eventually he went to the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute for an experimental stem cell transplant, but died days later after contracting Epstein–Barr from the marrow, which had been undetectable in the pre-transplant screening.

By 1993, the hospital officially had 465 licensed beds.

When Hurricane Katrina first hit New Orleans

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