Help us build our Innovative Care Center

The Challenge: Our Current Inpatient Hospital

• Our inpatient facility was built in 1967. While our exemplary interdisciplinary care has served our patients well for decades, much of the current building is antiquated and undersized for the full continuum of care required for our medically and neurologically complex patient population.
• The Innovative Care Center will allow us to expand and build upon our foundation as a world-class center of specialty pediatric care for complex patients.
• Our inpatients often require six to 12 weeks of intensive, interdisciplinary neurorehabilitation. The current inpatient hospital facility is ill-equipped for us to provide the full suite of services while optimizing the comfort and experience of patient and family.
• The Innovative Care Center concept and design begins with patient- and family-centered care and experience, simultaneously incorporating design features that embrace interdisciplinary care, leading-edge technologies, and optimization of patient outcomes.

Our Request

$55 Million Over 5 Years for Our New Innovative Care Center With an Anticipated Cost of $225 Million (We deeply appreciate the $6.75M of support from the state over the past 3 fiscal years.)

The Vision:

Healing Spaces and Specialty Care Maryland’s Children Deserve

• Build an Innovative Care Center on East Baltimore property that we already own.
• Double our capacity to provide intensive inpatient and day hospital neurorehabilitation.
• Support our patients’ complex medical needs and aid in their rest and recovery through specially designed clinical and non-clinical spaces.
• Increase access to care for Maryland residents and support Maryland’s health equity goals in prioritizing children’s health, especially for the increasing population of children with complex, neurodevelopmental diagnoses and conditions.
• In partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities^® Maryland, create a truly innovative “house within the hospital”, integrating transitional therapy spaces and living quarters into the Innovative Care Center. The anticipated benefits of this integration to the experiences of patients and families are manifold.

Increased Job Opportunities and Improved Quality of Life for East Baltimore Residents 

• Actively participate in the work of East Baltimore Development, Inc. (EBDI). The Institute is committed, with EBDI, to improving quality of life for residents of East Baltimore by creating job opportunities and increasing the number of people living and working in the community.
• Hire more Marylanders, especially Baltimoreans. Kennedy Krieger currently employs ~3,200 people, about 800 of whom live in Baltimore City, and we add approximately 100–150 jobs per year. This new facility will allow Kennedy Krieger to create even more jobs.

The Need

T.J.’s Story* 

T.J., 5, experienced a traumatic brain injury when her parents’ car was in a bad accident. The young Marylander was found unconscious and trapped under one of the seats of the car. After a prolonged extraction, she was flown to the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center. 

Once T.J. was medically stable, she needed to relearn how to walk, talk and feed herself. Kennedy Krieger was the perfect place for her to do that.

T.J. was a patient of the Institute’s inpatient rehabilitation hospital for about two months. During that time, she worked every day with physical therapists on core strengthening and supported walking, with occupational therapists on using her hands, with speech-language pathologists on talking and swallowing, and with recreational therapists to help her figure out how to still be a kid and have fun with her favorite activities.

Her team also included rehabilitation doctors, neurologists, child life specialists, nurses, nutritionists, neuropsychologists and social workers, to help support her family. 

Patients with traumatic brain injuries typically spend six to eight weeks receiving intensive neurorehabilitation services at our current hospital.

S.C.’s Story* 

S.C. is a teenage athlete who experienced a spinal cord injury during a game, leading to quadriplegia. For rehabilitation, he traveled to Kennedy Krieger from Florida, where he lives, as the Institute is one of the few centers in the country specializing in pediatric rehabilitation after spinal cord injury. 

While at Kennedy Krieger, S.C. received four to five hours a day of physical, occupational and speech therapies. He also worked with wheelchair specialists to determine the right chair to optimize his mobility in the community and his ability to be independent. 

He arrived still requiring a ventilator to help him breathe, but as he recovered, our pulmonologists and respiratory therapists worked with our rehabilitation doctors to wean him from the ventilator. 

Near the end of his stay with us—which lasted about three months—he started making trips to our outpatient building for aquatic and robotic therapies. Behavioral psychologists also worked with him and his team throughout his admission to help with adjustment and coping.

Patients with spinal cord injuries typically spend eight to twelve weeks receiving intensive neurorehabilitation services at our current hospital.

*Not an actual patient, but a typical patient for this diagnosis

Kennedy Krieger Innovative Care Center of the Future