Children’s Egleston has moved all 202 patients to new Blank hospital

Shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday, Brithany Morales, 8, made Atlanta health care history, arriving at the brand new Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Arthur M. Blank Hospital at I-85 and North Druid Hills Road. Children’s Egleston hospital location is now permanently closed.

One by one, about five minutes apart, an ambulance would emerge from the Egleston hospital complex carrying a single patient and caregivers. Some critical patients had ambulance lights flashing and police blocking off intersections to speed them through. Others just drove with normal traffic.

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Morales, who is awaiting a kidney transplant, was wheeled in waving on a stretcher. Some tiny babies were enclosed in rolling nursery carts stacked with medical technology. All arrived at the same destination, a 19-story state-of-the-art research hospital about five miles away, capable of caring for 446 child patients.

By sundown, 1,000 workers staffing the two Children’s locations had transferred all 202 patients, officials said. The final day’s patient count was a bit less than the 300 or so initially expected, because of discharges and normal fluctuations, said spokeswoman Kelly Thompson.

As the final patient left Egleston on a stretcher and was loaded into an ambulance, staff there closed the two doors with a flourish for the cameras and cheered.

Police from Brookhaven, DeKalb County, Emory University and Sandy Springs all worked to smooth traffic along the ambulances’ route.

Children’s chief executive officer, Donna Hyland, called the $1.5 billion new facility’s opening “a giant leap forward for Georgia’s kids, offering a beacon of hope for patients and their families.”

It was a moment years in the making, and an emotional one for families that have seen Egleston as an intimate part of their world for decades.

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Valerie Harper’s 17-year-old son Bennett is a medically complex patient who has grown up at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Egleston. Bennett’s not hospitalized this weekend, but the family lives in Atlanta and he has already visited the new site.

“I think it is a little bittersweet for him,” Harper said. “Egleston is home away from home for him. He’s had lots of surgeries and procedures there.

“He’s excited about the new building, but it’s going to be different. He’ll have to learn his away around at the new hospital.”

Credit: Ben Gray for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

However, Harper noted, “At the same time, it’s the doctors, nurses, and everyone there that are really the heartbeat of hospital, and that’s not going to change.”

Harper sits on the hospital’s family advisory council. She said she’s given input about how to make the new hospital space more comfortable for families.

That included everything from feedback on the furniture — to make it easier for parents to work remotely while at the hospital with their children — to the idea for an “I-spy” themed game for kids. In that game, children look for the hospital mascots Hope and Will woven into modern art work throughout the hospital.

“One thing he always enjoyed when we were in clinic is a mural or something where we could play “I spy,” she said. “It could help keep our minds off why we are there.”

Families who need to take a child to the ER should head to the new Arthur M. Blank Hospital at North Druid Hills Road and I-85. The address is 2220 North Druid Hills Road NE in Atlanta.

Children’s Arthur M. Blank cost $1.5 billion to build. The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation donated $200 million of that, and the facility bears his name along its side.

Children’s Healthcare’s other hospitals, Scottish Rite and Hughes Spalding, remained open as usual.

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The future of the Egleston hospital building has not been determined. Sunday’s events mark a poignant ending for a hospital that opened nearly 100 years ago in 1928, following the gift of another determined donor.

In 1916, insurance agent Thomas R. Egleston Jr. died, leaving $100,000 in his will to buy land and construct a children’s hospital. He had stipulated that the hospital be built in honor of his mother, Henrietta Egleston, who passed away in 1912 and who had lost four of her five young children to childhood diseases.

At 446 beds, Arthur M. Blank Hospital is 116 more beds than the number of beds at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Egleston Hospital had.

The new hospital is part of a campus spanning 76 acres. The campus includes the Center for Advanced Pediatrics, its outpatient, nonemergency facility and its Support Center, which houses its administrative offices.

The new hospital also has space specifically for families to stay in the hospital rooms with their children.

Rooms are larger with sleeper sofas, a built-in desk and curtains that can separate the space within the hospital room for added privacy. Every floor has washers and dryers, family lounges and kitchenettes to make it more convenient for families. Some families may spend weeks, even months at the hospital with their children undergoing treatment.

There are also game rooms, an outdoor basketball court, walking trails and Seacrest Studios, a broadcast media center donated by Atlanta’s Ryan Seacrest.

The Arthur M. Blank hospital also has more flexibility on how to use the hospital beds, which is key, especially during surges of illness. During the pandemic, Covid and flu surges have overwhelmed hospitals of all kinds including pediatric hospitals in recent years. Hospitals have had to turn regular hospital beds into impromptu critical care units.

The new hospital’s emergency room will cover 70,000 square feet — three times the size of the ER at Egleston. Arthur M. Blank Hospital will retain the same Level 1 trauma designation as Egleston, meaning that a hospital is capable of providing the highest level of care to patients suffering from severe and life-threatening injuries. These include severe car accidents, gunshot wounds and major falls.

AJC freelance photographer Ben Gray contributed to this story.

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