Two Pediatric Facilities to Pool Their Resources

In an effort to ensure top-flight medical care for children in San Diego, the region’s two major pediatric medical centers announced Wednesday a consolidation of services and research that will take place over the next five years.

The pooling of resources by the Children’s Hospital and Health Center and the pediatric units of the UC San Diego School of Medicine and Medical Center will result in improved care by bringing more doctors and researchers together while at the same time cutting costs and duplication of services, health officials said.

The agreement to consolidate formalizes and expands several cooperative programs already in place between the two regional institutions, such as the Language Research Center that looks at ways to correct speech impediments among children.

Over the next three to five years, physicians and researchers in individual departments, such as pediatric diabetes and pediatric cancer, among others, will work on specific ways to consolidate their functions. While almost all child care services will be centered at Children’s Hospital, the two institutions will maintain their separate identities.

“This is precedent-breaking in San Diego in terms of an agreement between a community hospital (Children’s) and the university,” said Robert G. Petersdorf, dean of the UCSD Medical School.

“The care should be, if anything, even better than it is now. The merger will enable us to bring resources to bear that we could not do in some cases alone.”

Blair L. Sadler, the president of Children’s, also praised the agreement--similar to those between institutions in Boston, Seattle and Cincinnati--as a way to maintain financial stability and ease the costs of planned expansion.

“From our standpoint, we were looking at the future and noticed that small children’s hospitals throughout the country were having financial difficulties,” Sadler said.

The 107-bed facility wants to expand to 180 beds with construction of a tower by 1989. “If we amalgamated with a university, we felt that we could facilitate expansion through economies of scale, than if we were to continue to compete and duplicate resources.”

Petersdorf said that the existing UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest is badly overcrowded and that physical relocation of pediatric facilities at Children’s will be an improvement for all the university’s patients.

“By putting all the kids together in one place, it not only will be better for children’s care in general, but our pediatric faculty as well would prefer to work at a children’s hospital as opposed to a general hospital.

“And having research programs in one place will be a shot in the arm for pediatrics in San Diego,” Petersdorf said.

In terms of finances, UCSD may contribute to new facilities at Children’s on a project-by-project basis, depending on approval from the UC Board of Regents.

“Eventually there will be commitments on the part of both institutions,” Petersdorf said. “Children’s is obviously changing its plans for research and clinical facilities to accommodate a bigger group of patients, some members of the UCSD faculty and a bigger research program.”