Letter from Jay Markson, MD
President, Children's Hospital Colorado Medical Board
Dear Colleagues,
As you are aware, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Children's Hospital Colorado. Reading back over some of the hospital’s history and listening to stories from my partner, Jules Amer, MD, I find the history always interesting and instructive. Dr. Amer has been practicing pediatrics in Denver since 1953. He truly knows the importance of a full service children’s hospital.
We rarely, if ever, see polio or tuberculosis these days, but these diseases were common during the first half century of the hospital’s history. I’m not sure if any of us could diagnose “intestinal fermentation” in a newborn. Now, we successfully treat babies born with transposed arteries of the heart, kids with pulmonary hypertension and a whole raft of genetic and developmental diseases that weren’t on any diagnostic guidelines thirty years ago.
Over the years, the hospital has faced clinical and administrative challenges…the emergence of new pediatric diseases, funding, nursing shortages and the building and moving of a hospital…twice (once in 1917 and again last year.) Children’s has continued to thrive and fulfill its mission of patient care, education, research and advocacy. Challenges continue to exist today…How do we provide healthcare for the under-insured? How do we deal with a shrinking pool of the best nurses?
For a century, Children's Hospital Colorado and all of us who take care of the young have risen to challenges over and over again. What excites me is that despite challenges, the hospital and kids’ healthcare have flourished. Children's Hospital Colorado is more than its location in Aurora. It is a whole network of care with facilities located across the metro area as a convenience to our patients.
When I see The new Children’s Hospital, it not only represents a great resource for me as a private practitioner, and for my young patients and their families, but it is a symbol of the passion for healing and for serving the young and their families that lives on in all of us in pediatric medicine and still drives us today.
And so, Happy Birthday to Children's Hospital Colorado. May we all celebrate.
Jay Markson, MD
President, Children's Hospital Colorado Medical Board
