Cottage Children’s Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Announce Collaboration to Expand Access to Pediatric Care
Cottage Children’s Medical Center (CCMC), based at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, announced a new collaboration today, becoming a member of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) Care Network. It means children on the Central Coast with complex conditions can now get more of their care close to home.
“Our focus at CCMC is high quality care for our pediatric patients locally. This affiliation is a huge leap forward in reducing the burden placed on families to travel multiple times a year for a chronic condition that requires a large academic center like CHLA,” says Miriam Parsa, MD, MPH, Chief Pediatric Medical Officer of Cottage Children’s Medical Center.
Families throughout the region will not need to make any change in how they access care at Cottage Children’s Medical Center. If CCMC does not offer the specialty indicated for a complex diagnosis, Cottage and CHLA will work closely together and with families to coordinate specialty care for children at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles as needed, and the child can return to CCMC for follow-up care or ongoing treatments closer to home
whenever possible.
“Cottage Children’s is proud to collaborate with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to provide the best care for the children and families we serve,” says Scott Wester, President and CEO of Cottage Health. “Keeping families close to home while their children are undergoing medical treatment makes a difference. It means their support system is nearby, and they aren’t making as many long drives. It’s one less burden on families dealing with the stress of a child’s illness.”
CCMC and CHLA will work together to coordinate specialty care when needed, to share clinical best practices and to train and educate nurses and residency fellows, and CHLA will be the pediatric partner of choice for CCMC referrals.
“We welcome Cottage Children’s to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Care Network,” says Bhavana Arora, MD, Chief Medical Officer of the CHLA Care Network. “We’re excited about this collaboration; It opens the door for Central Coast families to have more convenient access to lifesaving and life-changing patient care, research, and clinical trials.”
Cottage Children’s Medical Center is an award-winning regional referral center for the Central Coast, and is home to a pediatric residency program, a pediatric trauma center, pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, a pediatric acute care unit and Grotenhuis Pediatric Clinics for outpatient care. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is ranked the No. 1 pediatric hospital in California and among the top ten children’s hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Children’s Hospital Survey. A pediatric academic medical center, CHLA supports 350 specialty programs and services, oversees more than 500 clinical trials and manages more than 747,000 patient visits annually, delivering more pediatric care for complex patients than any other hospital in California.
Later this year, CCMC plans to open its new location of Grotenhuis Pediatric Clinics adjacent to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, and Cottage Children’s will continue to expand services and develop new programs throughout the region. Expect more developments in the months ahead as CCMC and CHLA collaborate on patient care initiatives for Central Coast children.
