07/15/10 - Pediatric center helps more than 600 families in year one

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: July 15, 2010
Contact: Jan Hollingsworth
jan.hollingsworth@siskin.org
423.648.1730, office

Siskin Children’s Institute-T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital Center for Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics helps more than 600 families in its first year

Children from around the region receive assessment, diagnosis and treatment for
developmental behavioral disorders

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – The Siskin Children’s Institute-T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital Center for Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics will celebrate its one year anniversary later this month. In its first year of operation, pediatric center staff members served more than 600 children, representing almost 4,000 patient visits.

Now children and their families no longer have to travel to larger cities like Nashville and Atlanta to receive assessment, diagnosis and treatment for developmental behavioral disabilities like autism, ADHD, sleep disorders, anxiety disorders and other special needs. “Children are seen with a broad range of developmental or behavioral conditions that require specialized care at home, in school and in their community to help them achieve optimal function and progress,” said Regina Gargus, M.D., FAAP, the pediatric center’s medical director and a triple board certified developmental behavioral pediatrician.

“This has been an exciting first year for the Center for Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics. We have had a remarkable number of referrals from our regional primary care and subspecialty physicians for children from birth through the late teen years,” Gargus said. “We know that early intervention gives a child the greatest chance for success in school and into adulthood, so the earlier a child is diagnosed, the earlier treatment can begin.” More than 100 physicians have referred patients to the center.

The pediatric center is a partnership between Siskin Children’s Institute and T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital (TCTCH).

“We are excited to be celebrating the one year anniversary of the pediatric center,” said Alan E. Kohrt, M.D., FAAP, professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at TCTCH. “The partnership between Children’s Hospital and Siskin Children’s Institute created a valuable new resource for our region and demonstrates the importance of our community working together so that we can accomplish more than we could acting individually.”

Patients represent more than 100 different communities mostly from Tennessee and Georgia, but patients have been referred from as far away as Louisiana, Wyoming and Russia. “We knew this center would fill a need for families in our area, and our first year statistics bear that out,” said Jerry Jensen, president and CEO of Siskin Children’s Institute.

Heather Honeyman, mother to Rilee, a two-year-old boy who was referred to the pediatric center soon after it opened last year, has seen the benefits of early intervention firsthand.“ Rilee saw Dr. Gargus for an initial appointment in the fall of 2009 when he was 19 months old,” Honeyman said. “After the appointment, she looked at us, and I just knew what she was going to say. She told us our son had autism.” Heather said that the routine 18-month autism assessment done by their general pediatrician had revealed the possibility of autism. She also said the family had noticed significant alterations in Rilee’s personality in a very short period of time. “The changes in Rilee were so dramatic it was like somebody came in the middle of the night and stole a part of him. Words he had spoken were suddenly gone from his vocabulary. He didn’t want to interact with us,” she said. Even though there were warning signs, she said hearing Dr. Gargus’ definitive diagnosis “was very hard.”

Soon after their initial appointment, the Honeymans made arrangements with the pediatric center for Rilee to receive weekly occupational and speech therapy, he had a psycho-educational assessment done, and he was placed on a medication regimen. “We lived in Athens, Tenn., when Rilee was diagnosed and moved to Cleveland to be closer to the pediatric center here in Chattanooga,” Honeyman said. “Rilee’s progress in early intervention has been amazing. We’ve seen a huge change in him. He’s playing with his toys rather than throwing them and banging them on the floor. He’s more open. He’s talking so much now.”

The pediatric center has a family-centered approach to care, realizing that a child’s success is linked to the entire family’s overall well-being. This approach is evident in the professional staff that families have access to for support. For instance, Brandon Rodgers, Ph.D., a doctoral-level behavioral health practitioner with a strong background in marital and family therapy joined the pediatric center in January to provide counseling and psychological-educational evaluations. Children with developmental behavioral disorders benefit from counseling as they learn skills for success in school and life. “The psycho-educational assessments provide important information that is critical to comprehensive diagnostic evaluations,” Rodgers said.

In addition to Dr. Gargus, the pediatric center has a licensed practical nurse and two nurse practitioners. Therapy professionals include pediatric physical, occupational and speech language therapists as well as staff skilled in addressing issues like feeding and swallowing, assistive technology needs and sensory integration. Therapists conducted more than 1,500 therapy sessions during the pediatric center’s first year.

Moving forward, the pediatric center will hire additional staff members, including a second full-time developmental behavioral pediatrician, to serve more families and reduce the wait time for an initial appointment, follow-up treatments and therapies.

For more information about the Center for Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, visit siskin.org/pediatrics. Families who have received services from the pediatric center are available for interview.

About Regina Gargus, M.D.
An accomplished triple board certified developmental behavioral pediatrician, Regina Gargus, M.D., FAAP, is the medical director of the Siskin Children's Institute-T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital Center for Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics. She most recently served as the medical director at the J.L. Dennis Developmental Center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. She received her medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia-Virginia Commonwealth University, where she also completed her pediatric residency and a neonatology fellowship. She is a certified physician executive by the American College of Physician Executives, with a master of science in administrative medicine from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She completed a developmental behavioral pediatric fellowship at Rhode Island’s Brown University School of Medicine in June 2005.

About Siskin Children’s Institute
Siskin Children's Institute makes life better for children with special needs and their families. The non-profit organization achieves its mission locally and nationally through four initiatives: education, outreach, health care and research. The Institute provides early childhood education where children with and without disabilities learn together; family support and professional development programs; developmental behavioral pediatric health care; and innovative research in early childhood development and special education. For more information about Siskin Children's Institute, visit www.siskin.org.

About T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital at Erlanger
As the only medical center in the Chattanooga and tri-state region devoted solely to children, T. C. Thompson Children’s Hospital at Erlanger provides the best in children’s health care by viewing the world from a unique perspective of children and understanding what they need. This special environment of healing for all children, regardless of their ability to pay, is the daily and ultimate goal of everyone at T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital. No other facility in the region can say they do the same. For more information about T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital at Erlanger, visit www.erlanger.org/childrens.

About Erlanger Health System
Erlanger Health System is a non-profit, academic medical center affiliated with the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, and is a Level-One Trauma Center for adults and, through T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital, is also the region’s only pediatric hospital. Erlanger is the only provider of tertiary care services for a four-state region encompassing southeast Tennessee, north Georgia, north Alabama and western North Carolina. With a history that dates back more than a century, Erlanger is recognized as one of the nation’s finest public hospitals and a leader in health care. Each year, more than a quarter of a million people are treated by the team of healthcare professionals who are part of Erlanger. For more information about Erlanger Health System, visit www.erlanger.org.