The burn unit at Arkansas Children's Hospital has reopened to adult patients after being closed to that group for several months.
The state's only dedicated burn unit had stopped accepting patients older than 21 on July 30 while the hospital worked to hire and credential an adult anesthesiologist to work in the center.
"This temporary change occurred because [the hospital and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences] had been unable to supply adult anesthesia staffing," Chanda Chacon, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Arkansas Children's, said in a recent statement. "As a pediatric hospital, [we] cannot safely treat adult burns until the needed adult anesthesia coverage becomes available."
In a message to the hospital staff Nov. 26, Chacon announced that the hospital and UAMS, which employs the physicians who work at Arkansas Children's, had re-established complete anesthesia services at the burn unit and that the center would begin accepting adult patients, effective immediately.
At the time of the closure, an Arkansas Children's spokesman said adults with severe burns would be rerouted to hospitals in Missouri and Tennessee through the Arkansas Trauma System. Thirty-eight patients were transferred via that system in the period from Aug. 1 through Sept. 26, said a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Health, which operates the trauma system.
The majority of those patients were sent to the Firefighters Burn Center at Regional One Health in Memphis, but some also went to hospitals in Tulsa and Springfield, as well as UAMS.
Metro on 12/20/2018