LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Though the future standalone children’s hospital in the Las Vegas Valley will not be completed until 2030, the new president of Nevada Children’s Hospital explains why the work to recruit hundreds of doctors begins now– and takes years.
FOX5 exclusively sat down with Russ Williams, the new president of Nevada Children’s Hospital for Intermountain Children’s Health.
Though Williams has been in the Las Vegas Valley for around eight weeks, he’s heard numerous stories from doctors and families of the lengths they travel to obtain care.
According to research firm Applied Analysis, 29,000 children must travel out of state annually for health care; Nevada ranks 48th in the nation for pediatricians per capita, according to the Intermountain Foundation.
“It should be very rare in a city the size of Las Vegas that a child should ever have to leave for care-and we are building a children’s health care destination,” Williams said. “We actually are bringing services to the market right now-anything we can do to provide care as close to home as possible, and then provide that full service, full coordinated care,” he said.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada’s first standalone children’s hospital moves forward in southwest Las Vegas
The new hospital will require 200 doctors and a total of 2,000 staff members with a variety of specialties, and recruiting has already begun, in order of focus (subject to change):
- Neurosurgery, Neurology, Cardiology, Orthopedics & Rehab; Hematology/Oncology, General Surgery (2025-2030+)
- Psychiatry, Endocrinology, ENT, Nephrology, Gastroenterology, Anesthesia (2026-2030+)
- Infectious Disease, CV Surgery, Pulmonology, Emergency Medicine, Hospital Medicine, Intensivists, Neonatology (2027-2030+)
- Genetics, Plastic Surgery, and continued Emergency Medicine, Hospitalists, Intensivists and Neonatology (2028-2030+)
- Palliative Care, Ophthalmology, Sleep Medicine, Urology, Allergy & Immunology, Derm, Dental, Rheumatology, other (2029-2030+)
Pediatricians and doctors across the Las Vegas Valley weighed in: what specialists do most children need, right now?
“There are some subspecialties where there are virtually nobody in market, and then there are some where we have wonderful subspecialists– we just need two or three more of them,” he said.
“We have heard from the general pediatricians of where they have some of the bigger challenges of getting patients in, in a timely manner- and so these are the areas where we’re actively recruiting: child psychiatry, pediatric rheumatology, pediatric endocrinology, pediatric neurology, pediatric pulmonary, and pediatric genetics. And then we actually were this close to onboarding a geneticist as well–again, so that the children that are here get that care without having to go anywhere,” Williams said.
While new building space is being built for new providers and services, such as the 90,000 square-foot Badura Clinic set to open on July 30, other hospitals are stepping up with partnerships.
“Dignity has reached out to us as a place where they would welcome our subspecialists to practice, knowing full well that we’re going to build a beautiful hospital and they’ll, you know, move over to that at the point in time. We’ve really been pretty broadly embraced by the community so that we can appropriately deliver as much of the care right now, pre-hospital, and then build to the moment when we can cut the ribbon and start seeing children in the new hospital,” he said.
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