Ochsner to build new children's hospital in New Orleans area thanks to Gayle Benson's big gift

New Orleans will get a second standalone children’s hospital as Ochsner Health expands its pediatric footprint with a large donation from Gayle Benson, the health system announced on Wednesday. 

The new 343,000-square-foot facility, called The Gayle and Tom Benson Ochsner Children’s Hospital, will include specialty pediatric services, a larger and more accessible emergency room, a Level IV surgical neonatal intensive care unit and enhanced operating rooms and imaging services.

The new facility will be located next to Ochsner's main campus on Jefferson Highway. Officials say moving the system's pediatric department to a standalone building will allow them to recruit more specialized doctors, provide a better experience for families and compete with the likes of Texas Children's or Boston Children's hospitals.

Locally, the hospital will also help Ochsner more visibly compete for pediatric patients with LCMC Health, which recently spent $300 million overhauling their flagship children's hospital in Uptown New Orleans.

“This facility will enable us to care for more children, retain and attract top pediatric physicians and care teams, and continue to set the standard of care,” said Ochsner CEO Pete November.

The gift from Benson, one of the wealthiest people in Louisiana and the owner of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, is the single largest gift Ochsner has ever received. Ochsner executives declined to give the value of the donation or ballpark how much the new facility will cost. However, the previous record for the largest single donation was set by Benson and her late husband when they donated $20 million to expand Ochsner’s Gayle and Tom Benson Cancer Center in 2015.

The new facility will sit between Jefferson Highway and River Road along Betz Avenue with the main entrance facing Jefferson Highway. To make room for it, Ochsner officials said parking lots and hospital-owned houses on Betz will be demolished. Renters living in those houses are all on short-term leases and have been given relocation packages and six months to vacate, said November.

Construction will start next year pending approval from the Jefferson Parish Planning Department to rezone the residential street for a hospital. Ochsner will also seek to purchase a block of Betz Avenue from the parish. Architects include the Houston-based HOK and Rozas Ward of New Orleans. Expected completion is late 2027.

Expanded patient care

Ochsner’s pediatrics program, made up of over 200 physicians in more than 30 pediatric specialties, provided care to about 100,000 patients in the last year. But the system also had to turn away patients because it did not have enough staffed beds, said Dr. Vincent Adolph, the chief medical officer of Ochsner Children’s Hospital. 

“A third of the patients we might get a call about, we don’t have the capacity to take care of them,” said Adolph. “We have to ask those patients to get their care elsewhere.”

When the new hospital opens, Ochsner’s pediatric cardiovascular unit will expand from 12 to 20 beds. The 14-bed intensive care unit will expand to 20 beds, and another 14 to 16 beds will be added for step-down care once a patient graduates from the ICU or surgery.

The acute care area, which focuses on children with illnesses and injuries, will grow from 44 to 52 beds, with room to expand.

A new emergency room will be accessible from the street, and will be much larger, with 26 beds. Ochsner’s current pediatric emergency room has only eight beds, and is more difficult to get to inside the larger flagship hospital.

Because the pediatric hospital will be next to the main hospital, it will be easier for families with small infants to receive care if both the mother and newborn need treatment in an integrated delivery unit.

“If the mom is really sick, we have the highest level of adult ICU care here to complement the obstetric care,” said Adolph. “If the baby is sick, we will have all of the specialists needed to take care of the baby in the same facility.”

Currently, the closest integrated delivery unit is in Houston or Birmingham, said Adolph.

“As we think about competing with nationally ranked hospitals around the country, we want the experience to reflect the quality and safety that we provide, and this facility will allow that,” said Adolph.

Raising the profile

A big benefit of a new facility is a higher profile for Ochsner's pediatrics program in a region where many think of the Uptown Children’s Hospital when they think about specialized pediatric care.

“I think many of us in pediatrics here feel like, ‘Oh, everybody knows Ochsner is a good place, but they don’t know we do pediatrics,’” said Adolph. “But there’s actually a pretty long legacy of innovation in pediatrics here.”

Children’s Hospital New Orleans has long been the leading player in pediatric care and serves as a hub in the Gulf South region. The hospital also recently completed a 230,000-square-foot expansion. But Ochsner officials said there is a need for more. 

“We’re not really focused on what they’re doing, or not doing, at children’s facilities around the state,” said Adolph. “We’re focused on growing our capacity to take better care of more and more patients.”

More specialty care

Ochsner’s plan follows a trend of children’s hospitals becoming more specialized. Profits have historically been lower at children’s hospitals, which have a higher payer mix of Medicaid vs. private insurance than adult hospitals. With advances in outpatient medical care, fewer kids need hospitalization.

However, children who do require hospitalization need highly specialized services and experts that aren’t typically available at smaller hospitals, said Dr. Michelle Macy, associate professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine and an attending physician of pediatric emergency medicine at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. Even if New Orleans doesn’t have enough of a pediatric population to fill two full-service Children’s Hospitals, the surrounding areas may help keep the hospitals afloat.

“These children’s hospitals tend to become a destination for whatever specialties they take a lead in,” said Macy. “Even if there isn’t enough of a population that lives in New Orleans, they might have looked at the business in a broader region or around the country for whichever specialties they’re going to be putting forward there.”

It’s also beneficial for a hospital system to be established in patients’ minds as providing cradle-to-grave care.

“They want to be able to have that full line of coverage for the entire population,” said Macy.