Today (Jan. 24) officials of Covenant Children’s are announcing the acquisition of a free-standing children’s hospital license. The new licensing signals innumerable growth opportunities for Lubbock’s only hospital built just for kids.

“With our prior licensing, we have been limited in the number of patients we can serve here and in the region,” said Dr. Amy Thompson, CEO of Covenant Children’s. “Covenant Children’s has been part of the Children’s Hospital Association of Texas, so we have been aligned with other children’s hospitals across the state. We’ve always had the desire to expand the services that we have. This new license allows us to expand the current services we have and to add other service lines that we haven’t been able to offer up to this point. We also will be able to explore some areas we know that are really needed both in our city and in the region.”

Another goal with the new licensing and expansion of services is keeping children and their families as close to home as possible when they’re in need of medical care.

“As a pediatric hospitalist by training, the hardest thing for me was to see our kids, our patients, have to be sent to larger metropolitan areas for treatment and services we don’t offer here,” Thompson said. “So, one of our goals is to meet the quality of care available in those larger cities, and, to be able to treat all of our patients as close to home as possible, whether they’re local or in our region.”

Thompson pointed out that women giving birth will also get to stay close to their babies. She said to provide those services for women, where they are close to the NICU (neo-natal intensive care unit) is a priority.

According to Thompson, there are plans for the existing building as well, in terms of refurbishing and renovating the space and the look, to be more specifically designed for children. Visitors to the hospital can already see this evidenced by the recent addition of colorful new lobby furnishings and artwork on display from local artist David Leake.

“Because of generous community donors, we already have many wonderful areas made just for families and kids, like the Family Resource Center, Teen Town, Lindsay’s Park (the Callaway family), Timmy’s Playroom (Tim Tebow Foundation), Storyteller’s Recording Studio, and the Racer Classic Carwash Children’s Performance Theatre, to name a few.”

The long-term goal, she said, is to continue the excellent quality of care for children that Covenant has always provided, in a free-standing children’s hospital that offers the quality of care that has the full gamut of services for children and also cares for women giving birth in the hospital.

About Covenant Health:
Covenant Health has served for almost 100 years as the only faith-based integrated health network in the West Texas, eastern New Mexico region providing a Christian healing ministry. Covenant’s network includes six hospitals, more than 1,000 licensed beds, more than 5,000 employees, 97 primary care providers, a medical staff of more than 600 physicians at its cornerstone facilities, and a regionally based health plan – FirstCare — offering high-quality affordable healthcare coverage. To learn more about Covenant Health, please visit covenanthealth.org.

(News release from Covenant Health)