Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital gets $2.2M ICU expansion

Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital at St. Vincent has expanded its pediatric intensive care unit by eight beds, or 53 percent, to handle growing demand for services to treat children with bacterial infections, heart defects and other serious cases.

The hospital held a ribbon-cutting Monday morning on the enlarged unit, which will allow doctors to treat hundreds more children a year.

Last year, the hospital turned away 36 children for lack of a bed, said Dr. Hossain Marandi, the hospital’s president. In the first three months of this year, the hospital turned away 20.

“Because we were so busy and every one of those 15 beds were full, we were unable to accept them,” said Marandi, who joined the hospital last year. “It’s something that happens on multiple occasions. This is something I could not accept.”

He called the pediatric intensive care unit “the heart of the hospital.”

“It allows every other department in the hospital to be able to provide care at the highest level,” he said.

After the expansion, the hospital has 23 pediatric ICU beds, up from 15 before.

By comparison, the largest children's hospital system in Indiana, Riley Hospital for Children, has 70 pediatric intensive care beds, including 36 at its downtown campus, 12 cardiac ICU beds downtown, 10 pediatric burn unit beds downtown and six pediatric ICU beds at IU Health North Hospital in Carmel. Riley is planning a six-bed expansion of its cardiac ICU unit downtown.

Peyton Manning Children's Hospital also has an 86-bed neonatal intensive care unit and a 17-bed emergency department.

The expansion cost $2.2 million, which covered construction and equipment costs. The money was raised through a gift from former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, along with proceeds from the hospital’s 11th annual Celebration of Caring Gala, which took place at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse on March 10.

The project is the hospital’s largest unit expansion since adopting Peyton Manning’s name in 2007. Previously, it was known as St. Vincent Children’s Hospital.