History

In 1949 there were 13 pediatric beds at the Mary Fletcher Hospital and 20 at the Bishop DeGoesbriand Hospital. Both were staffed by the four practicing pediatricians located in Burlington. There was a provisionally approved pediatric residency program at the Mary Fletcher with a single resident. This had been established in 1946.

In 1950, the College of Medicine recruited Dr. McKay to be its full-time clinical faculty member and to organize an independent Department of Pediatrics. Full approval for the residency program was obtained in 1952 and formal conversion from a division of the Department of Medicine to independent departmental status was achieved in 1955.

In 1956, Dr. Lucey was recruited as Chief of Pediatrics at the Bishop DeGoesbriand but resigned in 1960 in favor of Dr. McKay, in order to effect a more formally coordinated pediatric service and residency program. The Mary Fletcher meanwhile had expanded to a 34-bed pediatric floor on Smith 4 in 1952, and the DeGoesbriand to a 40-bed pediatric unit on Arnold 4 in 1965. In 1967 a 43-bed unit was opened on Baird 5 to give a total of 83 beds. By that time the number of pediatricians on the staff had expanded to 14 and the two hospitals had merged (in 1967) to form the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont.

By the early seventies the combined pediatric census had fallen to a point where it became clear that the 43 beds at the Mary Fletcher Unit (MFU) were sufficient to meet the clinical load. The service was consolidated at the MFU and Arnold 4 was converted to office space for University Pediatrics. Subsequent shrinkage of the demand for pediatric beds, together with the establishment of an intensive care nursery, led to reduction of the staffed beds on Baird 5 to the present number of 34.

The intensive care nursery, begun in 1972 with four bassinets on Shepardson 5, was moved to Shepardson 6 when the new delivery rooms were opened on Smith 5, and then to its present 20 beds on McClure 7.

Thus the Department of Pediatrics had gone from 33 beds in 1950 to 83 in 1967 to 34, plus a 20-bed intensive care nursery, in 1990. The attending staff grew steadily from 5 to 47 pediatricians and the pediatric resident staff from 1 to 12 during the same 40-year period.

In 2001, there are 20 full time faculty members, 13 in specialty and 7 in primary care pediatrics, as well as 51 active clinical faculty, most in primary care. The residency program is fully staffed at 18 resident, 6 per training level as well as one chief resident.

There is a four bed PICU staffed by a medical director along with a rotating schedule of five other physicians from various specialties. The NICU and general inpatient service remain at 20 and 34 beds respectively. There are approximately 2400 deliveries at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont each year.

On January 1, 1995, Fanny Allen Hospital, Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, and University Health Center became a new corporation to be known as Fletcher Allen Health Care. Fletcher Allen Health Care continues the close affiliation with the University of Vermont and its mission of the improvement of health status in the communities it serves.

Fletcher Allen Health Care serves as a referral center for patients from Vermont as well as from the upper tier of New York State. It is the only tertiary care center in the state of Vermont. The coordination between specialty and primary care has never been lost, and remains a core quality of the program. Broadening the geographic area of faculty involved in teaching primary care is a major immediate goal of the University of Vermont College of Medicine and in particular, the Department of Pediatrics.

It is this cooperation and coordination which has allowed us to become a center of excellence in the teaching of general pediatrics and the delivery of pediatric care.

On February 4, 2002 pediatric services were renamed Vermont Children's Hospital at Fletcher Allen Health Care--a designation awarded to us for having worked for more than half a century creating programs and partnerships throughout Vermont and upstate New York that have resulted in our ability to provide total comprehensive pediatric care to children and families. Simultaneously with the awarding of our new name, we opened a totally renovated in-patient floor that is child-friendly and family-centered resulting in almost all private rooms, a step-down transition nursery for graduates of our neonatal intensive care unit, and a Ronald McDonald House Family Room that has been heralded by families and staff as truly meeting everyone's needs.