Wolthoff, Wilson: Increasing Kids’ Access to High-Quality Healthcare in the Valley

Being a parent has always been challenging – never more so than today. This is especially true when it comes to ensuring that children can access the healthcare they need. While most children are healthy and face routine issues like the flu, others face unexpected challenges — like a cancer diagnosis or a chronic issue like juvenile arthritis. When these situations arise and threaten the normalcy of everyday life, families need the expertise and experience of healthcare providers who are devoted to children.

Children’s hospitals across Texas provide this expertise to children and families every day. Specialists trained specifically to work with children and alongside their parents are best equipped to treat the most complex conditions, catastrophic illnesses, and chronic diseases.

More than eight million children live in Texas, with 13 children’s hospitals across the state whose mission is to provide care to every child who needs it, especially those with the most challenging medical issues. Driscoll Children’s Hospital Rio Grande Valley, which began serving patients in May 2024 and is celebrating its official ribbon cutting this month, is the latest facility to join in this mission to provide the best healthcare for Texas kids, no matter their condition, location, or ability to pay.

Driscoll Children’s opening is a much-needed addition to the Valley’s healthcare landscape, adding over 30 pediatric medical and surgical specialties. The new facility is the only freestanding children’s hospital in the region and will support children who need critical, and often lifesaving, treatment. The facility will also contribute to our state’s strained healthcare workforce, training future pediatricians and pediatric specialists and subspecialists.

Stacy Wilson

It’s the focus on pediatric-specific care that makes children’s hospitals across our state so vital. Any hospital can admit children, but only children’s hospitals specialize in this care, balancing the complexities of healing growing bodies with the emotional support and bedside manner that is developmentally appropriate for little hearts and minds.

A third of the care provided at children’s hospitals results from a transfer from another hospital, often for the sickest children — almost 50% of the most extreme conditions seen at children’s hospitals are patients who were transferred.  Children’s hospitals like Driscoll also subsidize the pay of their pediatric specialists, ensuring these kids with the most complex conditions have access to the best care available, even when Medicaid payments or regional salaries can’t keep up with the pay required to attract top talent.

Caring for a two-month-old is completely different than treating an adult. The whole atmosphere of a children’s hospital — the board, the CEO, and the medical staff — is child-focused, from the teddy bear a child life specialist surprises a patient with or the nurse who drops by just to say hello. What makes children’s hospitals so unique is the community within them, who offer support and unique services like schooling for children with long-term conditions as they address some of life’s most difficult hurdles together.

Healthcare should never be one size fits all, and we recognize the unique needs and challenges faced by families and children navigating health issues. Driscoll Children’s Hospital is ready to welcome patients from across the Valley into this community, where the health and needs of our youngest residents are put first.

Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned jointly by Matt Wolthoff, president of Driscoll Children’s Hospital Rio Grande Valley, and Stacy Wilson, president of the Children’s Hospital Association of Texas. The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the authors.

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