CONTENTS
It starts with a
A letter from a fellow questioner at Children ’ s Hospital Colorado
As I look back on last year , I marvel not at the number of our accomplishments but rather their caliber and the ways in which we accomplished them . Much of the progress we made was already in motion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic . It speaks to our resolve that we were able to find resourceful methods to stay the course , inadvertently revealing new — and in some ways improved — modes of delivering care and inspiring innovation .
As part of a greater whole here on the Anschutz Medical Campus , our efforts in almost every department at Children ’ s Hospital Colorado intertwine students at the neighboring University of Colorado School of Medicine and specialists at UCHealth . Our partnership with the University also extends beyond our campus and the medical school .
In fact , one of our most exciting accomplishments in 2020 was standing up a surgical innovation competition among our pediatric surgeons and the engineering and bioengineering students at the University of Colorado Boulder . The three best ideas from that competition advance to development , funded by our Center for Children ’ s Surgery . Ultimately , our Center for Innovation assists with turning those concepts into companies , laying the groundwork for the future of medical technology . We ’ re looking forward to hosting that competition again this April .
Equally impressive was our rapid shift to telehealth . Thanks to infrastructure nearly a decade in the making , our hospital went from 100 telehealth visits a week to approximately 5,000 visits a week . Of course , nearly a year in , that number has leveled to about 2,500 a week . Now , it ’ s less about having to use the technology and more about identifying when telehealth is more appropriate and convenient for a patient and their family , as well as our providers . To that end , we ’ re actively working to optimize our telehealth experience because we know it ’ s here to stay . ( Read “ Virtual Validation ” on page 16 for more .)
Our mission has always been to improve the health of children through high-quality , coordinated programs of patient care , research , education and advocacy . Fulfilling that mission was decidedly more challenging in 2020 than in past years . Even so , I ’ m proud of the strides we made , and I look forward to a creative 2021 .
DUNCAN WILCOX , MD
Surgeon-in-Chief
Contents
FEATURE
8
CARDIOLOGY
Circulating Cast
COVID-19 NEWS
4
ENDOCRINOLOGY
A Vulnerable Population
6
Kids and COVID-19
16
Virtual Validation
SHORT ANSWER
3
ONCOLOGY
A Faster Sequence
3
PEDIATRIC SURGERY AND GASTROENTEROLOGY
Combined Expertise
3
FETAL CARE AND CARDIOLOGY
To the Heart of It
BRIEFS
4
MATERNAL FETAL MEDICINE
Prime the Pump
11
QUALITY & SAFETY
Flight Pathways
14
IMAGING
Suite Talk
18
CARDIOLOGY
Bubble Up
ACCOLADES
19
A (:) List
For a digital version of this publication visit : childrenscolorado . org / Qmagazine
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