Kirkland, Wash.-based EvergreenHealth and Seattle Children’s have launched a partnership to expand local access to advanced neonatal and pediatric care — a move leaders say strengthens care delivery amid industry challenges and rising pressure on hospitals.
As of July 1, the two organizations formalized their strategic affiliation, dubbed Neonatal and Pediatric Specialty Care Services, which builds on their nearly 20-year collaboration. The affiliation aims to bring more Seattle Children’s pediatric specialists to serve communities such as Snohomish, Bothell, Kirkland and Bellevue.
Seattle Children’s will provide medical direction and administrative leadership support, as well as guidance and consultation on clinical protocols, collaboration on quality improvement, and assistance with clinical training and education, the organizations said in a joint news release.
Seattle Children’s President and COO Jamie Phillips and EvergreenHealth Chief Strategy and Operating Officer Chris Bredeson told Becker’s they are excited about what the affiliation will mean for the communities they serve. They discussed what drove their decision to build upon their collaboration, the metrics they will use to evaluate the affiliation and how it fits into their organizations’ overall strategies.
Editor’s note: Responses are lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What specific gaps or challenges in neonatal and pediatric care on the Eastside drove the decision to formalize and expand this affiliation now?
Jamie Phillips: Within the state of Washington, we’re one of the only freestanding children’s hospitals, and what we’re noticing is with the headwinds that are coming in various different directions, that is going to have a definite impact on access for our families.
Some of the adult hospitals have had to close down their pediatric units for financial and other reasons. That’s where we come into play as a freestanding children’s hospital. We truly believe we need to keep care close to home when it’s appropriate, but also knowing when patients need to come to a care center like ourselves to get the care that cannot be provided elsewhere.
Working very closely with EvergreenHealth, we are able to bring specialists closer to home — particularly to an adult system with a high volume of OB-GYN services that will require it.
Chris Bredeson: From an EvergreenHealth perspective, we’re a public hospital, and we really feel like providing pediatric services at a high-quality level is important for our community, and it’s something that’s part of our mission. Since the pandemic, every year, it seemed like the question came up: Should we keep our pediatric unit open?
And we made the decision: We either have to close it for financial reasons, or we have to make it all that it could be. And so that’s when we started to talk to Seattle Children’s about what could be, and this is where we landed. This is a partnership that will help expand services for children and babies, so that we can keep those patients here in our community, with the expertise that Seattle Children’s will offer in terms of quaternary and tertiary referrals, and also specialists that will be available to come and provide services, either through telehealth or on site in the future at EvergreenHealth.
Q: How will clinical integration and medical direction from Seattle Children’s practically enhance patient care at EvergreenHealth, and what metrics are you using to evaluate success?
CB: We’ve looked at babies, neonatal infants that are transferred out, and the reasons they’ve been transferred out, and asked, “How can we fill those gaps so those patients could stay here?” And, this is not just financially driven. We know that Seattle Children’s has a lot of expertise and policies and protocols that are beneficial to our teams.
We have a quality committee as part of this joint venture, and we’ll have oversight with the medical director from Seattle Children’s. There will be a lot of enhancements, both in types of services and quality going forward.
JP: You have two organizations that have great quality outcomes, and how do you propel it to that next level within the pediatric realm? We will have this quality oversight committee — a lot of effort around clinical protocols, best practices that we have learned as a freestanding children’s hospital — that we can bring at EvergreenHealth, but also the level of collaboration we can do around quality improvement efforts, but also clinical training and education.
Q: What does this partnership signal about each organization’s broader strategic direction — and might this model influence future affiliations or expansions?
CB: As a public hospital, we have elected commissioners that provide oversight for our organization, and we believe that local governance is best. For us to remain independent, there are areas where we might have gaps, where we need to partner. We’re all about strategic partnerships that make a lot of sense around service lines, and so this is one that we’re super excited about. Culturally, we think it’s a good match and will help our community thrive into the future.
JP: As a freestanding children’s hospital, we have to expand access, and we have to be where our pediatric population is growing. It’s our obligation and responsibility that we provide high-quality care close to people as much as we possibly can with economies of scale. We understand that we can’t replicate quality everywhere, especially with the pressures we’re under today. And so that’s where we have to have adult system partners, and this is very common in many other states with freestanding children’s hospitals. We try to be that pediatric provider of choice, and we connect with our adult system to help provide that level of service that is needed. That has been our philosophy, and that’s how we are strategically approaching what we need to be doing.
