Arkansas Children’s Hospital breaks ground on new clinic in Little Rock
by October 26, 2016 3:23 pm 809 views
Arkansas Children’s Hospital broke ground Wednesday (Oct. 26) on its new $4.4 million Southwest Little Rock Community Clinic in Little Rock. The state’s Latino population has grown in recent years, and this clinic will have a bilingual staff when it opens in the spring of 2017.
“We put children first in everything we do,” ACH President/CEO Marcy Doderer said. “The clinic will truly offer families care close to home, just around the corner from where they live, play, and go to school.”
The 11,000-square-foot clinic, located at 9015 Dailey Dr., will have 15 exam rooms, and X-ray suite, a laboratory, and space allocated for the state’s WIC program. The facility is near the U.S. Post Office and the Dee Brown Library. It will provide everything from well-child visits to acute care, according to ACH.
A patient advisory board was formed in 2014, and it became apparent the Latino community needed a clinic closer to home, and needed a staff who spoke Spanish to better communicate with. The board discovered many Latino residents traveling to the ACH hospital in the city’s center. One of those advisors, Rosa Acosta-Montante, has three children who will benefit from the close proximity of the new clinic.
“Nobody knows the needs of children better than their parents,” Acosta-Montante said. “We are very happy about the opening of the clinic in southwest Little Rock to better serve the community.”
The 2010 census revealed 32,000 residents in that part of Little Rock, and roughly 18% of them identified themselves as Hispanic. That population group has steadily grown in recent years, according to estimates.
The clinic is the latest expansion for the ACH system in the state. ACH is building a 24-bed, 233,613-square-foot facility in Springdale. Arkansas Children’s Northwest will cost $167 million to construct, and another $261 million to operate during its first five years in operation, according to ACH. It’s on track to open on early 2018, ACH spokeswoman Hilary DeMillo told Talk Business & Politics.
The Springdale hospital will serve an 11-county region in Northwest Arkansas. It will have inpatient beds, emergency department rooms, operating, and clinic rooms.
Arkansas Children’s Hospital, a private non-profit, is one of the largest pediatric care systems in the United States. It has a 359-bed hospital in Little Rock and it includes the state’s only level 1 pediatric trauma center, and burn center. It also includes a level 4 neonatal intensive car unit, and a pediatric intensive care unit.