A Decade of Saving Trips for Specialty Care

Like the children it serves, the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Jonesboro Clinic has grown steadily for over 10 years. Despite the decade-long presence on Carson Street in Jonesboro, the staff says many community members are still surprised by the number of different services provided. The ACH Jonesboro Clinic saves families a long drive to Little Rock for pediatric needs ranging from audiology to urology.

One Clinic. Many Specialties.

When it opened in August 2012, the ACH Jonesboro Clinic focused solely on pediatric neurology patients. A staff of three provided services out of half of the current building. As the needs of children in northeast Arkansas increased, so did the services — and the size — of the ACH Jonesboro Clinic. Building renovations expanded the space available for seeing patients. The clinic is still a specialty clinic but with many more offerings. Patients with a referral from a general pediatrician can be seen for nearly 20 specialties or sub-specialties.

“What we have now is amazing compared to what we had then,” said Tami Carter, R.EEG T., and team leader at the ACH Jonesboro Clinic. “We’ve just continued to add specialties.”

The full-time services now include the following:

• Audiology
• Cardiology
• Endocrine/Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Pulmonology
• Surgical Services
  
  

The ACH Jonesboro Clinic also has full-time technicians for administering:

• Electroencephalograms (EEGs)
• Echocardiograms
• Electrocardiograms (EKGs)
• Fetal ECHO
• Holter monitors
• Pulmonary function tests
• Ultrasounds
  
  

Specialists from Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock regularly visit to see patients for:

• Adult congenital heart disease follow-ups
• Asthma
• Diabetes & endocrinology
• Genetics screening
• Nephrology
• Neurology
• Orthopedics
• Rehabilitation from surgery
• Urology
  
  

Teamwork and Technology

Two beneficial side effects of rapidly growing and adjusting to meet the needs of children in northeast Arkansas over the past 10 years are a facility equipped with some of the latest technology and a team that works together at an exceptionally high level.

Kim Almond, B.S.N., R.N., C.P.N., spent almost all of her 25-year career as a radiology specialty nurse at ACH in Little Rock before recently moving to the ACH Jonesboro Clinic full-time.

Almond said being in a smaller clinic instead of the larger hospital has allowed her to expand her knowledge and become a nurse well-versed in a range of specialties.

“We just help each other,” she said. When she isn’t assisting cardiology patients for Lee, she’s working with audiology, urology, or pulmonary patients. “I’m getting to learn asthma and allergy and pulmonary function tests. That helps me become a better nurse overall, because I understand more systems.”

Advanced technology helps the tight-knight team provide telemedicine services, saving patients even more trips outside the city. The up-to-date technology also allows near real-time responses for services like fetal echocardiograms. Instead of waiting hours for results, patients in Jonesboro receive the results of their fetal echos in minutes.

Poised for Growth

Neurology and cardiology built the foundation of ACH Jonesboro Clinic’s relationship with patients in the region. Diagnosis, treatment and follow-up visits for these conditions usually takes years. The clinic’s patients recognized they could receive the same high-quality care that led to Arkansas Children’s Hospital becoming nationally ranked for pediatric cardiology and neurology by U.S. News & World Report. Word spread and more patients sought other specialties. Upon this foundation of quality and trust, Arkansas Children’s committed to continued growth and added more full-time services.

Carter says families travel from central Arkansas and southeast Missouri to the ACH Jonesboro Clinic because they prefer the drive to Jonesboro over the drive to Little Rock. Saving families trips is what Arkansas Children’s calls bringing care closer to home, and it brings the state’s only pediatric health network one step closer to making Arkansas the safest, healthiest place to be a child.