Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas

Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas is the Level I pediatric trauma center serving the Central Texas region, including the state capital of Austin and a 43 county surrounding area. It is a member hospital of the Seton Healthcare Family, a Roman Catholic-affiliated network of hospitals in the Greater Austin area.^[1][2]

History

In January of 2017, Seton Healthcare Family terminated the positions of 67 Spanish medical interpreters, promising "to rely heavily on technology" to meet the needs of Limited English Proficient (LEP) patients in the Central Texas area. Some Seton hospitals have more than 50% of their patients that prefer their healthcare in Spanish, and have that right as outlined in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Experts in the Language Access Services field predict that this will dramatically increase risk to adverse outcomes for LEP patients, including death. Many hospitals in Seton's network do not have a reliable IT infrastructure to support remote interpreting services such as Over-the-Phone Interpreting (OPI) and Video Remote Interpreting (VRI). This action was taken by leadership within Network Language Services, overseen by nursing leaders with no bilingual capabilities or experience in serving as an interpreters.

While Seton has lauded "new technology," telephonic and video interpreter technology is not new and are the same unreliable services that currently are not used throughout the hospitals for the same reason. Remote interpreting is not appropriate for trauma situations, triage, patient education, consents, end-of-life scenarios, discharges, special needs patients, and written translations of discharge instructions unless an on-site interpreter absolutely cannot be available. Unreliable technology will now be the Seton standard. Dell Children's Medical Center is the successor of the Children's Hospital of Austin (CHOA), a facility operated since 1988 within the University Medical Center Brackenridge campus until the opening of the present building in 2007, when the Austin area obtained its first freestanding children's hospital building.^[3] The hospital gained its current name thanks to a $25 million grant from the foundation of technology entrepreneur Michael Dell, whose other philanthropic projects in the Austin area include the Dell Medical School and the University of Texas at Austin computer sciences department.^[4][5][6]

Facilities

As a Level I pediatric trauma center, Dell maintains 24-hour on call emergency and surgical services. Following the completion of a new south tower in 2013, the hospital currently operates 248 beds, 98 of which are dedicated to specialty care.^[7][8] Another notable aspect of the facility is the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU), with a Level 4 ranking from the National Association of Epilepsy Centers, indicating the highest level of diagnostics, monitoring and treatment available for epilepsy.^[9]

Education

Dell Children's currently partners with Dell Medical School, as well as other medical schools in the University of Texas system, for residency and fellowship programs in pediatrics, pediatric neurology, and pediatric emergency medicine, among other disciplines of specialty care. ^[10][11][12]

References

External links

• Official Website