Renown Health held a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for its newest children's primary care facility on Monday.
The new building is located at 6350 Mae Anne Avenue in northwest Reno.
Dr. Kristin Wilson, M.D., the Division Chief of Outpatient Pediatrics at Renown, says, "When you have a sick baby, the last thing you want to do is package them up and drive them very far away."
"Having a family-centered location like this is really important," she added. "We try to make sure to have really comfortable places here for the families to sit together, and there are little games in there that kids can play during their wait times as well."
Dr. Wilson says having a place where families can feel comfortable while their child is sick is very important to them because it makes them feel more at ease during a situation that could be tough.
"Being able to come to your own pediatric hub, your own care center, provides familiarity to the families and to the kids so they know that they're seeing Dr. Wilson and this is her office; they know when they walk in, the bright colors are meant to be a calming and exciting office for children," she said.
Brian Erling, the President and CEO of Renown Health, says part of their plan is to continue to grow to meet the community's needs.
He says that with so many new families, the need in this part of town is growing for pediatric care.
"We use data to decide where we're going to be putting our investments for our community, and we have a referral center that takes a lot of phone calls and a lot of appointments that people are trying to schedule online, so we know where our greatest demand is, and our greatest wait times and real estate availability drives that as well," he said.
He also says, "Outpatient pediatrics care is absolutely essential; it's all of your preventive care, immunization, well checks, and people who have young kids running around from school to daycare to work and all that, and we want to be able to bring these services as close to home and as convenient as possible."
Dr. Wilson also adds, "Pediatric care is paramount. Children grow into healthy adults not by accident but because of active participation between families and their care providers, so having a readily accessible clinic like this where we can actually be involved within our neighborhoods provides us that chance to grow our healthy families where our families live."
Erling says they intend to open a new facility. It will be a large ambulatory care center of 120,000 square feet. He says they're working with the city on this project and hope to be open by the end of 2027.
