Learning in Action
The Department of Pediatrics offers a wide range of pediatric medicine programs at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) and staffs the nurseries of the UAMS Medical Center, caring for more than 10,000 inpatient admissions and 1,200 newborns each year. ACH’s medical transport service, Angel One, is staffed by Department faculty as it carries more than 2,100 patients around the state each year, including 1,200 by state-of-the-art helicopter.
Physicians from the Department work at outpatient clinics operated by ACH on the main campus and in West Little Rock. Additionally, the department operates clinics located in the Dennis Developmental Center in Little Rock, the Schmieding Developmental Center in Springdale, and regional outreach clinics in seven subspecialties at more than 35 locations around Arkansas. Physicians from the department see a total of over 170,000 outpatients per year. The Department of Pediatrics works closely with Arkansas Children’s Hospital in providing clinical staff and medical direction to several cross-disciplinary specialty services including Transplant Services and Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Service (ECMO).
Additional Programs
Other specialized programs include the Asthma Care Center, state-of-the-art clinical care, education, and research; Sports Medicine PLUS, specialized care for young athletes; and Kids Care, a general pediatrics telephone triage service available to physicians in private practice around the state. The Department also supports Kids First, a multidisciplinary diagnostic and day treatment service for between 500 and 600 medically and developmentally at-risk preschoolers in 11 community-based centers distributed widely around Arkansas. In an effort to expand access to specialized care to rural areas, some divisions also provide telemedicine services.
The Child Health and Family Life Institute (CHFLI), a program in the Department of Pediatrics, addresses the medically, socially, and economically interrelated health and developmental needs of children with special health care needs and their families. The Department of Pediatrics provides medical direction for and administers the Head Start and Early Head Start programs in Pulaski County. Roughly 10 percent of the more than 10,000 Head Start children in Arkansas are in the UAMS-administered programs. The children receive education, health screenings and evaluations, direct health care and are included in model health programs.