Overview

N.C. Children's Hospital at a Glance

UNC provides high-quality, comprehensive care to children from all counties in North Carolina.

  • Total beds: 150
  • Outpatient visits in 2012: 96,269
  • Facility: Hospital-within-hospital
  • US News specialties ranked: 10
  • Critical care beds:
    • 48-bed Level IV NICU
    • 10-bed Level III NICU
    • 20-bed PICU

N.C. Children’s Hospital is one of the top children’s hospitals in the state, serving patients from all 100 counties, with the majority coming from central North Carolina, as well as a large number from the eastern part of the state.

N.C. Children’s Hospital has 150 inpatient beds and approximately 6,500 admissions and nearly 100,000 outpatient visits per year. The below-captioned graphic demonstrates outpatient visits during calendar year 2012.

State Map showing outpatient visit numbers in NC

Built in 2002, N.C. Children’s Hospital is known as a “hospital within a hospital,” and thus shares ancillary and support services across all of UNC Health Care System’s service lines.

A pie chart showing percentages of payors for UNC hospitals

N.C. Children’s Hospital patient payor mix is approximately 50 percent Medicaid, 25 percent BlueCross and BlueShield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) and 12 percent managed care.

Over 18 clinical departments in four UNC Schools (Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy) employ physicians and staff that work at N.C. Children’s Hospital or one of its satellite locations. Of those, the Department of Pediatrics comprises the majority of providers and other staff in the Children’s Hospital.

Vision and Goals

The new vision of N.C. Children’s Hospital is “to be the leading children’s hospital in the southeast region.” Local and regional competitors vary in size and scope. However, N.C. Children’s Hospital is well-positioned to achieve this vision by utilizing existing clinical, educational and research strengths at UNC. N.C. Children's Hospital ranking in all 10 specialties in US News & World Report's “America’s Best Children’s Hospitals” for 2012-2013 is a testament to this potential.

Strengthening N.C. Children’s Hospital will positively impact the UNC School of Medicine and Health Care System’s reputation and the ability to serve North Carolina as the “state’s children’s hospital.” The Steering Committee created seven high-level goals for N.C. Children’s Hospital, around which the recommendations for strategic priorities and initiatives were built:

  1. Be the leading children’s hospital in the Southeast region based on quality and reputation, with a commitment to having a full suite of services.
  2. Continue to support excellence in patient care and research, thereby ensuring that all 10 pediatric subspecialty programs recognized in the 2012-2013 edition of US News & World Report's “America’s Best Children’s Hospitals” continue to be ranked among the nation's best.
  3. Prioritize our resource investment to create key differentiators in the market.
  4. Have a streamlined organizational structure that will enable a team-based culture focused on children’s health and will increase accountability.
  5. Become a 24/7 children’s hospital, with centralized scheduling, which will help improve the continuity and quality of care that we offer both on the inpatient and outpatient sides.
  6. Provide our community practices with excellent service, ensuring that it is easy for referring physicians to send a patient here and to receive feedback.
  7. Continue to serve children and families from all 100 counties throughout North Carolina by growing our statewide network.