Our Mission

The place is colorful, imaginative and growing.

The people are skilled at helping parents keep their children and teen-agers healthy as well as battling the unfortunate realities of illness or injury.

The care is family-centered, recognizing that taking care of a child or teen means taking care of a family.

The MCGHealth Children's Medical Center is a dynamic mix of people in a place designed to serve today's children, teens and families.

More than an ounce of prevention.
At the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center, general pediatricians and adolescent medicine specialists provide the front line of care for children and adolescents with regular checkups, immunizations and information to help keep them healthy.

MCGHealth doctors and medical students take their prevention message into Georgia's classrooms, giving children, teens and their parents the information they need to live healthier lives. Some visits are in person, other times doctors and students reach into Georgia's classroom via the state's distance learning network.

The MCGHealth Children's Medical Center also is generating wellness information for young people. At MCGHealth's Georgia Institute for the Prevention of Human Disease and Accidents, researchers are examining practical issues such as how to get children and teens to eat more fruits and vegetables. They are exploring the idea that a young person's physical activity, eating habits and psychological characteristics may predispose him to high blood pressure and heart disease later in life. Children who are overweight and have higher-than-normal blood pressures are participating in a physical training program to see if exercise can help them lose weight and lower their blood pressure.

More than a pound of cures.
For those health care problems that can't be avoided, the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center has assembled an entire medical team of doctors with subspecialty training in the many, divergent needs of sick and injured children and adolescents. Pediatric surgeons, pediatric heart surgeons, pediatric intensivists, pediatric anesthesiologists, pediatric hematologists-oncologists, pediatric neurosurgeons, pediatric nephrologists, pediatric gastroenterologists, pediatric ophthalmologists, pediatric otolaryngologists and pediatric neurologists are a sampling of the diverse medical team. Compassionate critical care.
The MCGHealth Children's Medical Center serves as the regional Pediatric Trauma Center capable of caring for the most critically ill or injured child. In is given to young accident victims, as well as babies born with severe heart defects and children with severe medical problems such as asthma or pneumonia.

Pediatric intensivists, specializing in the critical-care needs of children, as well as pediatric critical-care nurses and a variety of other health care professionals provide the constant attention these children need to recover from a serious injury or illness. To ensure optimal care even in transit, the Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team travels to other hospitals to bring critically ill children to the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center for definitive care.

A big emphasis on the smallest patients.
The staff of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) provides care to the most severely premature and ill newborns. Here, the constant attention of neonatologists, neonatal nurses and respiratory therapists gives critically ill babies a fighting chance to grow and thrive. These health care professionals often travel to other cities and hospitals to transport critically ill babies to the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center.

The unit has one of the country's first ECMO - extracorporeal membrane oxygenation - programs for babies whose lungs or heart have failed and more routine techniques can't support. ECMO and the NICU staff turns the odds around for many of these babies, dramatically improving their chances of surviving and living a healthy life. The success of the ECMO program for newborns has led to an ECMO program for older children in respiratory failure from problems such as near-drowning.

A lot of hearts.
Unlike adults who develop heart disease, some children are born with heart problems. Pediatric cardiologists and pediatric heart surgeons at the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center work as a team to diagnose and treat these problems.

Today the Children's Heart Program is following some 4,000 children born with heart problems. At times the care they receive begins even before birth. Working jointly with perinatologists at MCGHealth, pediatric cardiologists can diagnose some heart problems before a baby is born and either correct the problem at that time or plan for the baby to be born in a facility that can meet his medical needs.

With an eye always on prevention, pediatric cardiologists are working with anatomists to better understand why children are born with these heart defects. Researchers have been able to duplicate in the laboratory many of the worst heart defects found in children. Information learned from this work already has affected the care delivered to young heart patients at the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center.

Mothers and babies come first.
The Children's Heart Program is one of many examples of how the faculty and staff of the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center and MCGHealth work as a team when a mother-to-be, her baby or both may be in jeopardy.

In these high-risk situations -- such as a mother who has a history of premature births -- perinatologists and pediatric specialists come together to ensure the safest possible pregnancy, delivery and management of any problems that follow for mother or baby. We call the MCGHealth Perinatal Center First Place because mothers and babies should never come second.

Caring for kids with cancer.
The pediatric hematology-oncology team cares for children battling cancer and blood diseases: leukemia, tumors of the brain and abdomen, cancers of the soft tissue and lymph nodes and sickle cell anemia. The search for better ways to treat these diseases has MCGHealth Children's Medical Center researchers looking for a way to bolster the body's immune system in fighting cancers and coordinating a North American study to try to prevent strokes in children with sickle cell disease.

Ever mindful that patients are children first, the team also offers programs such as Camp Rainbow, a summer camp where children with cancer and blood diseases, their siblings and a host of volunteers swim, ride horses, play games, fish and have fun for a week at Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge, Ga. Project Wish gives children and families a needed boost such as a hoped-for vacation or shopping trip.

Taking care to kids.
Instead of children and families from throughout Georgia always traveling to the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center in Augusta, sometimes health care providers take their expertise to the children. Specialists at the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center pack up regularly and travel to satellite clinics in the Georgia cities of Waycross, Brunswick, Savannah, Valdosta, Columbus, Warner Robins, Macon, Athens, Moultrie, Thomasville, Fitzgerald, Albany and Dublin.

Trimming distance with technology.
Technology also can reduce the need for families to travel for health care. The MCGHealth Telemedicine Center and Georgia Statewide Telemedicine Program uses high-resolution video cameras and computers linked together via a special grouping of telephone lines and fiber-optic cables to enable MCGHealth Children's Medical Center doctors to examine patients in clinics and hospitals hundreds of miles away and -- most of the time -- eliminate the need for families to travel.

Practicing what we teach.
As a clinical facility of the state's health sciences university, MCGHealth Children's Medical Center is a dynamic teaching environment where the most current approaches to health care are practiced, taught and -- often -- discovered.

Many well-trained eyes and ears are focused on each child at the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center where future pediatricians, neonatologists, pediatric cardiologists, pediatric allergists and immunologists, pediatric neurologists and pediatric intensivists work alongside experienced MCGHealth faculty and community faculty. MCGHealth also has a pediatric nursing externship and occupational therapists and physical therapists can get extensive clinical training working alongside practicing therapists to learn the skill and art of caring for children. Places for fun.
Playrooms and teen rooms enable children and teens to get out of their hospital rooms and have fun. Child and adolescent life specialists help meet the non-medical needs of young patients in the playrooms and bring toys and games to the bedside of those who need to stay in their rooms. Holiday celebrations, special visitors and surprises are provided by child and adolescent life specialists. They help with education as well with programs, such as Sibling Day, when the brother or sister of a young cancer patient learns more about the special treatment their sibling is receiving.

Help with schoolwork.
Young patients at the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center can be hospitalized from a day or so to weeks or even months at a time. To help eliminate worries of falling behind at school, a MCGHealth Children's Medical Center teacher works closely with hospitalized children or adolescents and their teachers to keep young patients' education on track until they get back home.

A library for learning.
Health care providers give parents and their children a lot of information and answer plenty of questions about the disease or condition they face. But many times, the child or adolescent patient and his family want to know more. The Family Resource Library is a convenient place where they can go at their leisure to read and learn.

Policies that respect families.
Visiting hours don't really exist at the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center; parents are encouraged to be with their children at any or every hour. Siblings also are welcome, even in the intensive care units, as long as they are immunized and don't have a cold or other contagious infection.

The place is made to order.
The MCGHealth Children's Medical Center opened in December of 1998. It is a 149-bed facility dedicated to the care of children, teens and their families. Throughout the hospital, the theme of technology and nature mesh providing a beautiful, comfortable haven for the child and family.

The MCGHealth Children's Medical Center faculty, nurses, child life specialists, allied health professionals and hospital administrators worked with family members of children who have been hospitalized and the children themselves to ensure the hospital design meets the needs of hospitalized children and teens.

The grounds feature trees, evergreens and flowering plants. A cascading wall of water outside becomes a small reflecting pool in the main lobby. There is also a video aquarium in the lobby, projecting images of various species of fish, sea horses and other sea inhabitants.

Large textured dinosaur fossils are found etched in the walls of the main hallway and "tree canopies" accent entries to departments. An expanded Family Resource Library provides the family and child convenient access to the latest information about diseases and treatments. An outdoor roof garden on the fourth floor offers family members a peaceful diversion while they remain close to their hospitalized child. Family lounges offer soft lighting and comfortable seating in a "living-room" atmosphere and serve as a primary gathering place for family and friends. The MCGHealth Children's Medical Center has its own emergency room, operating rooms, laboratories, radiology suites, admissions process and parking. Its proximity to MCGHealth's other clinical facilities will allow it to continue making use of those vast resources as well.

The 220,000-square-foot hospital replaces existing inpatient pediatric facilities formerly located on the eighth floor of MCGHealth Hospital, and is easily accessible from the pediatric outpatient facilities in the MCGHealth Ambulatory Care Center.

The $53 million facility is financed by bonds approved by the Georgia General Assembly as well as contributions from individuals and businesses, patient-care revenues generated by MCGHealth and institutional equipment funds.

To provide ongoing support, the MCGHealth Children's Medical Center, along with 164 other children's facilities in the United States and Canada, participates in the Children's Miracle Network Weekend of Champions. Since 1986, funds raised in Augusta and surrounding communities have been used to develop programs such as child and adolescent life, to purchase equipment and furnishings, and to fund the new hospital. Individuals and businesses have made the telethon an annual success and have helped raise community awareness about children's special medical needs.

Faculty and staff at the Medical College of Georgia and its MCGHealth Children's Medical Center appreciate the trust and support of these individuals and businesses and state of Georgia. And, they appreciate the privilege of caring for our country's most precious resources.