Annual Reports
85+ Years Healing Children in East Tennessee
For more than 85 years, Children's Hospital has been the primary provider of pediatric care in East Tennessee. Throughout our history, Children's Hospital has been the first in the region to offer a number of unique, specialized services to meet the special needs of infants, children and teens. This emphasis on children is what makes Children's Hospital unique among medical centers.
Each year, East Tennessee Children's Hospital presents a report to the community of its efforts and success of the previous year and its plans for the future.
Facts About Our Hospital
Children's Hospital has served the children and teens in Knoxville and East Tennessee since 1937.
- Children's Hospital is home to nearly 2,000 full and part-time staff supporting hospital operations. We are East Tennessee's 25th largest employer.
- Children's Hospital has 152 licensed inpatient beds; 60 level III neonatal intensive care, 13 support pediatric intensive care and 79 beds support a variety of medical/surgical conditions.
- TennCare is our most significant insurance program, representing 65 percent of our funding annually.
- We have partnered with Knox County's adult facilities to provide expert on-site neonatal nurses supporting newborn deliveries. We provide on-site neonatal nurses supporting newborn deliveries with special trained clinicians at Parkwest staffed 24/7 and our neonatal transport team attends high risk deliveries at Fort Sanders Regional. We collaborate to facilitate, develop, coordinate and conduct workshops and meetings to provide consultation and education to healthcare professionals and community organizations relative to neonatal care.
We provide physician, nursing and management services for patients requiring pediatric intensive care in designated beds at UT Medical Center otherwise too unstable to be transferred to ETCH until such time they become stable for transport or discharge.
- We work closely with all hospitals in our region to ensure they are prepared to care for children by providing education and, when appropriate, pediatric supplies.
- Children's Hospital has neonatal and pediatric transport programs available 24 hours a day to work with hospitals confronted with children whose needs exceed their capability or expertise.
- Our hospital has led statewide efforts to improve the quality of care by reducing system-wide central line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) and pressure injuries caused from medical devices, and is currently involved in a consortium of hospitals through the Tennessee Initiative for Perinatal Care (TIPQC) to improve care to babies born dependent on drugs (a condition called NAS, or Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome), as well as to improve nutrition in very low birth weight infants. The NICU Tiny Baby Taskforce is also working to incorporate the newest evidence-based research into the care they provide to micropreemies as they continue to reduce the incidence of brain bleeds in these tiny infants.
- Children's Hospital has one of the largest cochlear ear implant programs.
