Recipients Gallery

Ranken Jordan

262 Employees | 280 Volunteers | Founded 1941

Considering the children first in all we do.

In service to its mission, Ranken Jordan provides for the medical and rehabilitative needs of medically complex children, from birth to age 21, after their critical care needs have been met at acute care hospitals, and before they are able to safely transition from hospital to home. Ranken Jordan thus serves as the bridge between the acute care setting and home, providing Care Beyond the Bedside, a highly effective model of care that considers the whole child.

Care Beyond the Bedside includes comprehensive rehabilitative therapies, nurturing and encouragement, learning, play, socialization, family involvement, adaptive sports and community integration. These elements, working in concert, provide a medically complex child’s best opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential and greatest future independence.

Mission Statement

The Dana Brown Charitable Trust has long been a supportive partner to Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital, significantly touching the lives of every child served. Currently, the hospital is undergoing expansion, growing from 34 beds to 60, the maximum allowable for a specialty hospital in the state of Missouri. This expansion would not have been possible without significant support from the Dana Brown Charitable Trust.

The Dana Brown Charitable is not only helping the hospital to increase in size, but is also helping to ensure that the original structure will soon mirror the new building’s superior surfacing materials and lighting, including additional task lighting at bedside. Dana Brown Charitable Trust funding will assist the hospital in renovating the nursery and the nursing station in the original structure, introducing state-of-the-art technologies and user-friendly design. The efficiencies these renovations will create will enhance patient health and comfort, and patient safety.

Impact

Patients at Ranken Jordan represent the sickest 1% of all pediatric patients, whose needs consume 40% of all pediatric health care dollars. Common admitting diagnoses among Ranken Jordan patients are spinal cord injuries resulting in full or partial paralysis, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), premature birth and/or complications of birth, cardiac arrest or stroke, cancer, trauma, burns, and diseases and disorders of the heart, respiratory, musculoskeletal or metabolic systems. Many Ranken Jordan patients have multiple medical conditions upon admittance, and may also have developmental and psychological needs. Often such extreme needs result in financial devastation for families. For this reason, among others, 85% of Ranken Jordan Patients are Medicaid-eligible, and many live at or below the poverty line.

Ranken Jordan exists to serve all of the needs of medically complex children, from medical care to rehabilitation that helps each child build or restore as much function as possible under their respective circumstances. While undergoing such care, patients at Ranken Jordan reach many milestones of childhood, fostered by a Child Life team, which ensures multiple play opportunities that let kids be kids.

Stays at Ranken Jordan average 42 days, although some children remain for months or years. During their unique Ranken Jordan experience, kids are up and out of their rooms for up to 70% of every day, engaged in adaptive sports, games, indoor and outdoor play activities, expressive therapies, such as art, music and horticulture, cognitive challenges and more. Kids are also engaged in speech and communication therapies, physical therapy, recreational therapy (including Challenger Baseball and golf), warm water aquatic therapy and occupational therapy. The hospital also provides an educational liaison, to help kids maintain grade level while hospitalized.

Dana Brown Grant support has impacted thousands of medically complex children, from birth to age 21, improving their health and wellness, abilities and function, as well as their present and future independence. Tens of thousands more will be impacted in the coming years because of the Dana Brown Charitable Trust’s recent gifts toward construction of a new wing of the hospital and renovation of the existing structure.