The city of Avondale is a step closer to having its first pediatric emergency room as the tallest beam was raised on the expanded Phoenix Children’s Southwest Campus earlier this month.
Before the structure was topped-out, Phoenix Children’s executives, staff and workers on site signed their names on the closing beam and blessed the building.
The nearly $40 million expansion, which will include a free-standing emergency room and a specialty clinic, is expected to open in the next two years and comes at a time when Avondale’s pediatric population is projected to grow exponentially.
Every year, there are over 30,000 emergency room visits made by Avondale children, according to Phoenix Children’s.
ER visits likely will grow over the coming years, as the southwest Valley’s smallest residents are projected to represent 400,000 to 500,000 of the region's population by 2030.
But the city’s current emergency facilities do not specialize in pediatrics, a population physically and emotionally distinct from adults and that requires specialized care.
In short, children are not merely tiny adults, as Russ Korcuska of Phoenix Children’s put it.
“Everything is smaller,” said Korcuska, the senior vice president of construction and special projects. “Their bodies react to treatment and conditions and medicines very differently,” he said.
The existing urgent care at the site is being converted into a 35,000-square-foot emergency room that will provide 24-hour care.
The ER will have 40 rooms, six “fast-track” beds and a full suite of imaging services, that are expected to open winter of 2023.
The three-story, 71,250-square-foot specialty clinic is expected to open a little earlier, around fall 2022, and will include specialists in “high-demand areas,” according to Phoenix Children’s, including cardiology, oncology, orthopedics and behavioral health.
The facilities are projected to serve about 40,000 children annually.
At some point, Phoenix Children’s hopes to make its Southwest Campus a full-service hospital, though the organization has not yet finalized a timeline, Korcuska said.
Madeline Ackley can be reached at mackley@iniusa.org or found on Twitter @Mkayackley.
Madeline Ackley is a Phoenix-area native who joined Independent Newsmedia in July 2021 as a reporter for the Goodyear-Litchfield Park Independent. She is passionate about delivering hyperlocal coverage of issues that matter to her community.
She has previously covered immigration, policing, homelessness, veteran’s issues and breaking news and her byline has appeared in The Arizona Mirror, The Arizona Republic, The Phoenix Business Journal and Cronkite News.
Madeline is passionate about animal welfare and the environment. She loves to cook, travel and spend time with her family.
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