Skip to main content

News Release

Phoenix Children’s Remains Prepared for COVID-19

Phoenix Children’s is working tirelessly to care for our patients and remains committed to supporting the state and our community as Arizona continues to work through the challenges of COVID-19.  Since the start of this pandemic, Phoenix Children’s has taken a number of steps to ensure that we can continue to provide care to Arizona’s pediatric population.

We remain in full compliance with all of Governor Doug Ducey’s Executive Orders and are prepared for a surge in COVID-19 patients. Additionally, we remain available to assist our adult hospital partners with a potential surge of pediatric COVID-19 patients, up to age 21. While we have seen an anticipated rise in COVID-19 positive patients, Phoenix Children’s is accustomed to operating at high-acuity levels and near capacity. We continue to have the bed capacity, resources, testing capabilities and PPE supplies on hand to ensure we can safely continue to provide world-class pediatric care, which includes time-sensitive and critical surgeries for our patients.

Phoenix Children’s maintains this operational level of preparedness in response to COVID-19 thanks to our clinical leadership, resources and staff.  Our incident command center has been maintained since late February.  Since the start of this pandemic, Phoenix Children’s executive leadership has committed to keep staffing and compensation levels unchanged through our Pay Protection Program, which ensures that all full-time and part-time employees receive pay for 100% of their normally scheduled hours.  As a result, we have the bed capacity needed for normal operations while maintaining our availability for surge-related transfers, we also have the providers and expertise available to staff those beds.

Phoenix Children’s has a unique role in helping the state of Arizona, our community and our hospital partners during this crisis, and we are committed to serving as the primary provider of quaternary pediatric inpatient care. We are taking necessary steps to ensure that this preparedness does not impact our ability to care for and provide the services that our community and the state have come to expect and require from Phoenix Children’s. We look forward to our continued participation in the Arizona Surge Line and will maintain our availability to accept pediatric patients from other Arizona hospitals to assist in the statewide response to COVID-19. 

Phoenix Children’s will continue to follow all CDC guidelines related to social distancing, proper handwashing and masking, and encourage ongoing compliance with these guidelines in our community. We have implemented practices across the care continuum from emergency services, surgical care, inpatient care and outpatient visits to assure our patients and families are receiving the best and safest care. We will continue to do our best to safeguard patients’ health, curb the spread of the virus and support and protect our clinicians who are providing the best possible care in the most challenging of circumstances.

 

About Phoenix Children’s Hospital

Phoenix Children’s Hospital is Arizona’s only children’s hospital recognized by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Children’s Hospitals. For more than 35 years, Phoenix Children's has provided world-class inpatient, outpatient, trauma, emergency and urgent care to children and families in Arizona and throughout the Southwest. As one of the largest children’s hospitals in the country, Phoenix Children’s delivers care across more than 75 pediatric specialties. For more information about the hospital, visit http://www.phoenixchildrens.org.

 

Share this page