Take one of Vero’s most popular and established pediatricians, add the skills and resources of a nearly brand-new $400-million pediatric hospital, give it a local twist and you may just have the best recipe yet for better children’s health care in Indian River County.
The hospital is Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, which recently joined forces with Indian River Medical Center to provide enhanced pediatric care here.
The popular pediatrician is Dr. Susan O’Toole-Evans, who has been taking care of children in Vero Beach since 1990. She makes no bones about how much she dislikes sending any child to a hospital. “The hospital,” explains O’Toole-Evans, “is a very frightening place for children,” adding that her goal, “is to always keep kids out of emergency rooms.”
While that might seem like an indictment of local ER care, O’Toole-Evans doesn’t see it that way at all. “It’s hard to expect any adult hospital – even a very fine adult hospital – to have [learned] the art of pediatric care.” For starters, O’Toole-Evans says, “it takes a least a year” for both doctors and nurses to learn the nuances of dealing with children in a hospital setting.
When O’Toole-Evans’ young patients do require hospitalization, this 25-year veteran of Vero pediatric care says she favors three facilities in Orlando: Nemours Children’s Hospital, The Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and the Walt Disney Pavilion at Florida Hospital for Children.
Why? In no small part because, as O’Toole-Evans puts it, “The x-ray machines are made for kids. The equipment is made for kids. The beds and everything are made and designed for treating children.” Or, as Vonda Sexton at Nemours in Orlando says, “75 to 80 percent of patients in most hospitals are adults. Here, all our patients are children.”
O’Toole, who operates out of Island Pediatrics on 37th Place, also happens to be on the board of the Nemours’ Children’s Health Alliance and its BrightStart program. She earned her medical degree at Case Western Reserve and served her residency at Harvard University’s Children’s Hospital of Boston. A lifetime member of the Alpha Omega Alpha national medical honor society, she says she is delighted that Nemours is now partnering with Indian River Medical Center to bring a greater pediatric care presence to Vero Beach.
That greater presence started when Dr. Heather Owens, a Nemours pediatric hospitalist by way of Napa, CA joined the IRMC emergency room staff in November of 2014. On New Year’s Day, a second Nemours pediatric hospitalist, Dr. Suzanne Pavlou, joined Owens here in Vero. According to Sexton, Nemours is currently recruiting a third hospitalist and hopes to have him or her on staff in the ER by early March.
(“Hospitalist,” by the way, is a relatively new term. It was coined about the same time today’s nine-year-olds were born and describes doctors who specialize in the care of patients inside the hospital.)
Dr. Charles Mackett, senior vice president and chief medical officer at IRMC, announced the new partnership saying that parents who bring their children to IRMC’s emergency room “can rest assured that their children will be receiving the highest quality of services.”
Some of the services these newly arrived pediatricians will provide, according to Mackett, include assisting in the care of babies during and after birth, the provision of routine medical clearance for young psych patients and consultation for and care of pediatric patients coming into the IRMC emergency room.
Mackett also noted in his statement that more than 1,000 babies are born at IRMC each year and more than 9,700 children receive care in its ER, so the addition of these Nemours-trained specialists should have an immediate and wide-ranging positive impact.
Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando was just awarded the prestigious “Lantern Award” by the Emergency Nurses Association for its ER operations. It is one of only 17 hospitals in the entire country and one of only two in the state of Florida to be so honored. In fact, in its brief history – it only opened its doors in 2012 – the $400 million Nemours Orlando facility has become a kind of pediatric care “destination” having attracted patients from 60 of Florida’s 67 counties, all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Marshall Islands, the Virgin Islands and 53 foreign countries.
In March of 2014, Nemours added to its pediatric portfolio by buying five “urgent care” facilities in Florida with the nearest one being in Melbourne. Now with this partnership with IRMC, the Nemours name has made it all the way down to Vero.
While Indian River County is generally known for its older population, O’Toole says she’s seeing something of a demographic shift taking place these days as more and more of the young adults she took care of as children 20 or more years ago are now returning to this area and starting families of their own: often in the same neighborhoods where they grew up.
“I’m seeing my son’s friends coming back to Vero,” O’Toole-Evans says.
And to her office.
Her oldest son, Christopher, graduated from St. Edward’s in 2002, and O’Toole-Evans says his classmates are “coming back with their babies and their second babies, so I think we’re seeing more and more young people coming back here.”
What that means for any future expansion of pediatric care will depend on multiple factors, including the success of the first three Nemours hospitalists, the amount of influence and resources local parents and grandparents can bring to bear on upgrading healthcare for children, and whether or not O’Toole-Evans’ view of a shift in the demographics of this area turns out to be correct.
In the meantime, however, these first “baby steps” towards improved pediatric care in Vero will certainly be applauded by parents and grandparents living here now.
Dr. Susan O’Toole-Evans is with Island Pediatrics at 960 37th Place, Suite 101 in Vero Beach. The phone number is 772-562-5662.
