RANKEN-JORDAN HOME FOR CONVALESCENT CRIPPLED CHILDREN

Ranken Jordan is a pediatric bridge hospital providing a continuum of care for children (birth to age 21) with complex medical conditions. Ranken Jordan is the first and only pediatric bridge hospital to provide intensive rehabilitative therapies during the period after acute care needs have been met at referring hospitals. Our goal is to help each child build or restore functional abilities to the utmost degree possible under their respective circumstances as well as to prepare each family to adequately care for their child so they may safely transition home. Without Ranken Jordan, many of these kids would have no alternative but to transfer from acute care hospitals to adult nursing homes which do not provide the kind of rehabilitative therapies and life enhancing, child-friendly services we provide.

Treatment for each child at Ranken Jordan is guided by our Care Beyond the Bedside model of care which is designed to heal children physically, mentally, emotionally, and developmentally in order that each may return home as soon as is feasible. An integral component of our model is ensuring that patients are up, dressed, and out of their beds for up to 70% of their waking hours. Care Beyond the Bedside activates the healing power of a child’s instinct to play, grow, learn and interact with others. Nurturing this instinct is essential as the average inpatient stay is 54 days long. Here, kids can be kids, despite the challenges they face as the most ill of all patients in pediatric medicine.

Ranken Jordan recently opened a new 78,000 sq. ft. expansion, allowing us to accommodate up to 60 patients at one time and shorten an ever-growing list of children awaiting our unique transitional services. Last year alone, we increased the number of kids we care for by 25%. In addition to our physical expansion, we have also increased the breadth of services we provide – adding a new clinical psychologist, a board-certified pediatric cardiologist and a gastrointestinal specialist to our team.

On April 9, 1941, Mary Ranken Jordan and her husband, Clay, opened the doors to the Ranken-Jordan Home for Convalescent Crippled Children (now known as Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital) to care for children suffering from polio, osteomyelitis and bone tuberculosis. While the children we care for don’t have polio today, they do have medical complexities ranging from grievous accidental injuries to exceptionally rare diseases. Because of the advances of modern medicine, these children with medical complexities are surviving and living longer than what was ever expected. Therefore, the need for Ranken Jordan is higher than ever before.