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Cincinnati Children's Announces Plans For Liberty Township Outpatient Facility

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

CINCINNATI -- Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center announced today that it will build an outpatient pediatric facility in Liberty Township that will include eight outpatient operating rooms, a pediatric emergency department and 12 short-stay (23-hour) observation beds.

The facility will feature a full range of outpatient pediatric subspecialty services and radiological capabilities; therapy services, such as occupational, physical and speech therapy; and testing services, such as laboratory, audiology, EKG, EEG, ECHO and pulmonary function tests.

The 200,000-square-foot facility will be built on 65 acres of land that Cincinnati Children's purchased in 2005 on the corner of I-75 and State Route 129.

"The Liberty Township facility reflects our commitment to providing services in locations that are convenient for the children and families we serve," says Dee Ellingwood, senior vice president, planning and business development. "This will be one of the largest pediatric outpatient facilities in the nation."

The announcement follows a thorough internal and external analysis of data to determine the scope of services to be provided. This analysis included interviews with community physicians and families, a review of the area's demographics and an analysis of where families currently go for pediatric care in the Liberty Township area.

In addition to learning that a convenient and comprehensive outpatient facility was something that families and physicians wanted, Cincinnati Children's realized that it needed more outpatient operating room capacity than could be provided at its Outpatient Mason facility, which has only three operating rooms and no additional land on which to expand.

Among the benefits of the Liberty Township facility for families and physicians are the ability to:

• Serve many families closer to where they live
• Provide pediatric emergency services for more than 200,000 children and adolescents who live in the area
• Increase access to pediatric specialty clinics and outpatient pediatric surgery. Since many families in the northern Cincinnati area currently come to the Cincinnati Children's main campus in Avondale for surgery, specialty clinics and emergency services, the new facility will help to decompress operations at the main hospital by providing these services in Liberty Township, thereby decreasing wait times and improving scheduling throughout the medical center.
• Add an MRI, CT scanner and sedation capabilities for radiology services at Liberty Township. These services are currently available only at the Cincinnati Children's main campus.

"Our patients anxiously await the convenience of the Liberty Township facility, which will be within minutes of our Liberty Township office," says Steve Brinn, MD, a pediatrician with Liberty Sharonville Pediatrics. "Our doctors in our Sharonville office also will consider this new facility a major convenience, allowing our patients easy access to tertiary pediatric care. We look forward to a long working relationship with the new Cincinnati Children's outpatient facility in providing Liberty Sharonville Pediatrics patients superior pediatric health care."

The new building will open in the summer of 2008. Groundbreaking is expected this summer. The facility will cost approximately $83 million, the majority of which will be financed. This $83 million includes the building and equipment.

Cincinnati Children's is a 475-bed institution devoted to bringing the world the joy of healthier kids. Cincinnati Children's is dedicated to transforming the way health care is delivered by providing care that is timely, efficient, effective, family-centered, equitable and safe. It ranks third nationally among all pediatric centers in research grants from the National Institutes of Health. The Cincinnati Children's vision is to be the leader in improving child health.