HERSHEY, Pa. — Penn State Health Children’s Hospital is increasing its capacity to provide the highest-level of care to critically ill and injured children with the expansion of one of its most specialized units, the Pediatric Intermediate Care Unit (PIMCU). Along with the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, the PIMCU provides care to the sickest patients. Children’s Hospital staff and leadership celebrated the unit’s additional 14 private beds with a ribbon cutting on May 13.
This expansion, the result of careful planning from a multidisciplinary team of pediatric experts, will allow the Children’s Hospital to provide better access for pediatric patients who need critical care such as surgical and trauma patients, as well as those transferring from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It will also increase the Children’s Hospital’s ability to accept more patient referrals and provide specialized and complex surgeries and post-surgical care. With the additional PIMCU beds, the Children’s Hospital now has 160 total inpatient beds.
“As the region’s only freestanding Children’s Hospital, it is our privilege to provide the specialized care our young patients and their families need and deserve,” said Yatin Vyas, pediatrician-in-chief and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital, and vice president of Penn State Health Children's Hospital. “This expansion allows us to meet the growing demand for the high-level services unique to our Children’s Hospital and keep families in this region for all levels of pediatric care.”
Penn State Health Children’s Hospital is the most comprehensive children’s hospital between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, fully equipped to treat the most severely ill children of central Pennsylvania, with both the highest-level NICU and a Level I pediatric trauma center. Children’s Hospital physicians and nurses provide a full spectrum of support and specialized care to infants, children and adolescents, including pediatric hematology and oncology, pediatric surgery and pediatric emergency medicine. A three-floor expansion of the facility in 2020 included a new Women and Babies Center and a Small Baby Unit, created for growth and improved brain development in premature babies.
Penn State Health continues to expand access to its top pediatric specialists across the region. Penn State Health Children’s Lancaster Pediatric Center opened in June 2022, bringing 20 pediatric specialties, general pediatrics and walk-in care to people in and around Lancaster County. Earlier this year, the Children’s Hospital also made it easier for Lancaster-area patients and their families to access high-level care by offering some non-emergent pediatric surgical procedures at Penn State Health Lancaster Medical Center.