About Oklahoma Children's Hospital

Helping your child stay healthy or deal with an illness, injury or chronic condition inspires everyone at Oklahoma Children's Hospital OU Health to do their best work every day. We strive to provide you with top-quality, family-centered care that best fits the needs of your child while making any hospital stay as short and as comfortable as possible.

Ranked in the Nation's Top 50 by U.S. News & World Report

Oklahoma Children’s Hospital OU Health has earned U.S. News and World Report’s ranking as one of the Top 50 Best Children’s Hospitals in the nation for Pediatric Cardiology & Heart Surgery and Pediatric Gastroenterology & GI Surgery.

Find Valuable Health Information Online

You’ll find our website filled with helpful information about our special pediatric health services and hospital, as well as the many online resources you can use to explore health conditions, procedures, treatment options, preventive care and healthy living choices for kids, adolescents, parents, and moms to be. Not only are we the state’s only freestanding pediatric hospital, but we are also one of the first hospitals in the nation to provide complete care for moms and newborns in the same building.

Benefit from Academic Medical Center Partnership

When you choose Oklahoma Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City to support your family’s health, you benefit from our academic medical center affiliation that connects your child to the best of many worlds, including our combined commitment to exceptional patient care, along with access to the latest treatments and advanced technologies that result from emerging scientific research conducted right here on our campus.

Work with Nationally Recognized Healthcare Providers

At Oklahoma Children's Hospital, you’ll work with extensively trained doctors, the highly recruited national experts at OU Health who also serve as faculty members at the OU College of Medicine to train our future generations of doctors as they also focus on discovering new medical innovations. These outstanding physicians, all based in Oklahoma, serve as your child’s personal doctors. Let us know how we’re doing and if you have questions or need more information about Oklahoma Children's Hospital or any of our pediatric or pregnancy and childbirth services. You’re always welcome here.

Receive Care from Experts in Pediatric Hospital Medicine

When your child is a patient at Oklahoma Children's Hospital OU Health, your family benefits from 24/7 care by board certified and board eligible pediatricians who specialize in caring for children admitted to the hospital. Pediatric hospital medicine physicians lead and collaborate across services for your child while he or she is hospitalized, working with nurses, social workers, case managers, nutritionists, and speech, occupational and physical therapists. Your child's care is coordinated by a hospitalist team that communicates with primary care physicians, ensures follow up appointments and discharge needs are met, and prescribes necessary medications, all while keeping you and your family at the center of the care team. You can expect pediatric hospitalists to meet with you and your child every day to review new information, check up on your child and create a care plan for the day.

Pediatric hospitalists have special skills to help manage a full spectrum of serious and medically complex illnesses. Some examples of diseases treated include:

• Respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia, croup, bronchiolitis, and asthma
• Urinary tract infections and pyelonephritis
• Sepsis and meningitis
• Flu and flu like illnesses along with their complications
• Gastroenteritis and dehydration
• Seizures – both new onset and chronic
• Osteomyelitis, cellulitis and abscesses
• Toxic ingestions
• Newborn issues such as jaundice and poor weight gain

Find out more when you call the main hospital number at (405) 271-KIDS and find driving directions and more.

Patients & Families at Oklahoma Children's Hospital

Your comfort and safety always take top priority at Oklahoma Children's Hospital. Find out everything you and your family need to know to make your experience and time with us as low-stress and productive as possible.

From free Wi-Fi and valet parking services to visitor policy changes during the COVID-19 pandemic designed to keep you as safe as possible, you’ll appreciate the care and concern, private spaces, social work services, hospital amenities and local resources for patients and families at Oklahoma Children's Hospital.

Patient Guide

Discover what to expect during a hospital stay, as well as guidelines for patient safety, security and visitor policies when you explore the online Children’s Hospital Patient Guide. Learn about the members of your child’s care team, along with their roles and responsibilities, how to prepare for emergencies and tips for parents of a hospitalized child. View Oklahoma Children's Hospital Patient Guide.

Oklahoma Children’s Hospital Annual Report

Each year, we share with you the incredible efforts and activities at Oklahoma Children's Hospital that ensure you and your family continue to benefit from access to the best pediatric specialists and child-centered care anywhere in the region. View the current Oklahoma Children's Hospital Annual Report.

Historic Milestones at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital

Oklahoma Children's Hospital OU Health has come a long way from its compassionate beginnings in 1928 as the Hospital for Crippled Children, part of the early OU School of Medicine’s University Hospital in Oklahoma City, established to serve a growing regional population of young and indigent children with special orthopedic needs.

After weathering the economic depression of the 1930s and financial challenges following World War II, the need for an up-to-date Children’s Hospital became apparent during the polio epidemic of the late 1940s and early 1950s. By the mid-1950s, Oklahoma Children's Hospital, along with University Hospital, OU School of Medicine and OU School of Nursing created the foundation for a major public/private medical center in Oklahoma City that was designated as University of Oklahoma Medical Center in 1956. In 1957, Oklahoma Hospital for Crippled Children was renamed Oklahoma Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Although Children’s Memorial Hospital would undergo several more name and ownership changes, the remarkable work of its dedicated doctors and staff continued to build a worldwide reputation for top-quality care and leading advancements in pediatric services that extends to this day.

Oklahoma Children’s Hospital Milestones

As described by William Kizer in his book OU Medical Center: A 100 Year History, Oklahoma Children's Hospital has achieved many notable milestones, including:

• Oklahoma’s first open-heart surgery, performed in 1959 on a 12-year-old boy with a congenital heart abnormality that created a hole in the partition between upper chambers in the heart

• First use of a locally designed heart-lung machine in 1959 to repair a ventricular septal defect (hole between pumping chambers of the heart) in a six-year-old girl, which began heart catheterization services and an intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital

• Birth Defect Center established at Children’s Memorial Hospital in 1961, funded in part by a grant from the national March of Dimes organization

• Garrison Tower Addition, 1977 – Seven stories for inpatient acute care, medical-surgical care, including special-care beds for burn patients and neonatal and pediatric intensive care units; expanded clinics and support services

• Nicholson Tower Addition, 1979 – Five stories added 48 beds, 56 bassinets, occupational therapy and physical therapy departments, on-premises school for patients, nurseries, mental health services, continuing education center

• Bielstein Center Expansion, 1979 – Updated front entrance, outpatient and registration center, cafeteria, administrative and clinical services, gift shop, ambulatory surgery center

• Heliport constructed atop Garrison Tower in 1982 added Medi Flight air ambulance service to support neonatal intensive care program transporting critically ill infants; Children’s Hospital gains a national reputation as one of America’s top centers for pediatric medicine

• Don H. O’Donoghue Rehabilitation Institute at Children’s Hospital (1981) serves youngsters with a wide range of disabling birth defects, diseases or injuries with a physical and vocational rehabilitation center that includes a special unit for convalescent patients up to age 21; rooftop playground for exercise and fresh air; both the Rehabilitation Institute and Children’s Hospital join University Hospital/Oklahoma Memorial Hospital as the third part of what had become Oklahoma Teaching Hospitals

• Added first MRI in 1984 in cooperation with Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, only the second MRI device in Oklahoma

• Conjoined twin separation surgery first performed in 1987

• Comprehensive Children’s Cancer Center opens at Children’s Hospital in 1994 when Jim Everest family lost son Jimmy to bone cancer; facility features the most advanced diagnostic and therapeutic services for children with cancer and blood diseases

• Enhancements to Children’s Hospital state and national reputation – Ranked third nationally for pediatric kidney transplants, operated the state’s only infant heart transplant program, treated almost 75 percent of Oklahoma’s pediatric cancer patients, operated the only pediatric burn unit in the area

• New branding for hospital in 2001 changes to Oklahoma Children's Hospital at OU Medical Center

• Reconfiguration of OU Medical Center Hospitals (2007-2009) locates Oklahoma Children's Hospital at OU Medical Center within Everett Tower; facilities enhanced and expanded to continue improving services, patient care and comfort at an already world-class children’s facility; includes landscaped rooftop garden

• Visually striking entry and glass atrium added in 2011 to link Oklahoma Children's Hospital with OU Children’s Physicians Building and the Women’s & Newborn Center at Oklahoma Children's Hospital; atrium offers water features, shops, food service, whimsical sculptural works; streamlined convenient pedestrian/patient access and color-coded directional navigation within the facilities continue to focus on top-quality care, comfort and safety for youngsters and families