In an effort to improve the quality and convenience of children’s health care in mid-Michigan, MSU and Sparrow Health System announced a partnership to consolidate the majority of their pediatric specialty services into a single still-to-be-determined location.
The partnership, announced at a press conference on Monday afternoon, aims to integrate and co-locate numerous pediatric specialists and physicians from MSU, Sparrow Health System and private practices, as well as recruit new specialists to the Lansing area, officials said.
“First of all, people no longer can or will take 25 trips through the phone book to get what they need,” said Stephen Guertin, medical director of Sparrow Children’s Center. “We will create a single-source center so that no matter what the pediatric subspecialty needs you have. You make that one call.”
No site has been determined yet for where the proposed children’s medical center will be, but Dennis Swan, president and chief executive officer of Sparrow Health System, said the Sparrow Professional Building, 1200 E. Michigan Ave., in Lansing is the likely initial destination.
A budget or a name for the project also has not been set, university spokesman Jason Cody said. A date for the center’s opening also has not been announced.
This summer, a call center will open to help direct patients to the various specialists and clinics, and planning will begin to determine an official site for the center, Swan said.
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said the initiative will proceed with the needs of the community in mind and allows both MSU and Sparrow Health System to be a model to other communities across the state.
“I think in order for this to be successful, both Sparrow and MSU have to plan aggressively together,” Simon said. “And I think the commitment by Sparrow to identify space where we can locate the practices … is a very important step in committing this bigger vision to unfold.”
Marsha Rappley, dean of the MSU College of Human Medicine, said the partnership reaffirms the need for the college to have a strong presence in Lansing, despite the college’s expansion across the state. By next year, there will be more students, faculty and research occurring in Lansing than there currently is, Rappley said.
“What would we be if we were not about providing services for the people who live and work here?” she said at the conference. “We would not be meeting our responsibility … to ourselves to be the strongest medical school we can possibly be.”
MSU is meeting with the Children’s Health Initiative, or CHI, board in the next two weeks to talk about ways in which their interests can be focused around the announcement, MSU spokesman Kent Cassella said in a statement.
CHI is a partnership between MSU and community health care stakeholders that aims to develop an efficient and sustainable model for specialized child health care in mid-Michigan, according to its website.
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