Phase Two Update From Joshua Alexander, MD

Phase One Completed. On to Phase Two!

It’s been another exciting year of fundraising, planning, and growth for the Fitch Family Comprehensive Pediatric Rehabilitation Program Fund. Thanks to the generosity of the Peterson Family Foundation and other generous donors, we’ve successfully completed Phase One of our Fundraising Campaign.

With these funds, we’ve hired an outpatient Pediatric Rehabilitation Nurse Coordinator (Tina DiBenedetto, RN) to improve care coordination and support for families of children with cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, spina bifida and brain injury who are seen in our outpatient clinics.

We have successfully developed and are about to begin our UNC Pediatric Rehabilitation Family Education And Support Team (FEAST), a dedicated multidisciplinary inpatient group composed of a physician, a case manager, a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a speech language pathologist, a neuropsychologist, and a child life specialist. This team will work within UNC Children’s to identify, educate, support, and coordinate care for families of children admitted to the hospital with disabling conditions like brain injury, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, cancer, muscular dystrophy, and more and will be connected to our existing outpatient care coordination efforts to ensure continuity of care and support.

We have recently begun using initial funds from Phase Two to hire medical scribes who will support our outpatient physicians when they see patients in clinic so that the physicians can focus on the patient and family while the scribes help document the care that is provided. This will allow the physician to directly interact with the patient and family, free from the distraction of writing notes on a computer.

Future funding in Phase Two will be used to invite national experts to visit and offer their recommendations on best practices in the design of a successful acute inpatient pediatric rehabilitation program and day rehab program. This will offer the opportunity to potentially recruit and retain national experts in the field to join our program!

In Phase Two we will also look to establish an Endowed Professorship in Pediatric Rehabilitation which will enable us to recruit and retain exceptional providers who will continue to care for patients and families we serve.

We are grateful for your support and thankful especially to the Fitch Family who have dedicated so much time and ef

fort to make sure that families of children who need pediatric rehabilitation services at UNC Children’s will one day be able to receive ongoing, seamless, coordinated multidisciplinary rehab care and support from the day they are admitted to the hospital until the day they return safely home and beyond.