Sinai Health System is a comprehensive medical campus on Chicago’s west side comprised of Mount Sinai Hospital, Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, Sinai Children’s Hospital, Sinai Medical Group, as well as Sinai Urban Health Institute and Sinai Community Institute. Sinai’s overall mission is to improve the health of the individuals and the communities it serves, and its vision, to be the national model for the delivery of urban health care.
Sinai Children’s Hospital cares for 450-550 premature and/or low birth-weight infants annually in its Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). When a newborn is premature and/or low-birth weight, they are often unable to regulate their own temperature. This is due to their skin not being fully formed, which results in increased heat and fluid loss. For these infants, careful attention must be paid to the thermal environment from the moment of birth until the time when the infant is capable of regulating their own temperature.
A generous grant from the Washington Square Health Foundation was made to Sinai Children’s Hospital to purchase a GE Giraffe Shuttle for Sinai’s NICU. This new equipment allows Sinai to enhance the quality of care and outcomes for the critically ill infants served. The Giraffe Shuttle is a transportable power source for GE Giraffe OmniBeds that facilitates the mobility of these incubators throughout the hospital. The Shuttle equipment reduces or even eliminates the need to move critically ill newborns to and from neonatal transport incubators, thereby reducing the potential for clinical problems associated with intra-hospital transport.
Sinai Children’s Hospital, housed within Mount Sinai Hospital, is a critical healthcare safety net for low-income children. Sinai Children’s Hospital encompasses general pediatric care, a pediatric trauma program, pediatric specialty care, rehabilitation therapy, patient education and prevention outreach for children from birth through adolescence. 20,000 days of inpatient care are provided for 5,700 children annually, as well as in 8,000 pediatric visits annually via subspecialty outpatient care. For additional information about Sinai Health System, please visit: www.sinai.org
