Cook Children’s at a glance

Cook Children's Health Care System roots go back to 1918 when the Fort Worth Free Baby Hospital was founded, and to 1926 when Matilda Cook established a trust fund for the construction of a hospital. The current Cook Children's Medical Center opened in 1989; an adjacent $13 million medical office building opened in 1999. Cook Children's Health Care System was formed in 1994.

Cook Children’s records more than one million patient encounters each year through its Medical Center, specialty clinics, neighborhood clinics, physician offices, outpatient settings and home care.

Cook Children’s offers pediatric care in more than 30 pediatric services and specialties, including Critical Care (Neonatology, Intensive Care and Trauma Care), Hematology/Oncology, Cardiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery, Pulmonology and Neurology/Neurosurgery.

Cook Children’s is a non-profit, exclusively pediatric organization comprised of six companies: Cook Children’s Health Care System (integrated management), Cook Children’s Medical Center (inpatient and outpatient care), Cook Children’s Physician Network (primary care and specialists), Cook Children’s Home Health (home care), Cook Children’s Health Plan (insurance) and Cook Children’s Health Foundation (fund raising).

Mission: Cook Children's Health Care System exists to improve the health of every child in our region through the prevention and treatment of illness, disease and injury. 

Commitment to Excellence 

• Cook Children’s, based in Fort Worth, Texas, is one of the country’s leading integrated pediatric health care delivery organizations.
• In 2007, Cook Children’s was ranked as one of Child magazine’s Best Children’s Hospitals in the nation for its delivery of patient-centered clinical care.
• Cook Children’s opened the first dual-room IMRIS intraoperative MRI suite in the world in Feb. 2007 and performed more neurosurgeries in the first six months of operation than any other IMRIS installation. For patients with brain tumors, the iMRI offers a greater chance for removing the tumor in a single operation.
• Cook Children’s Medical Center was one of only 41 hospitals, including eight children’s hospitals, in the nation to be named 2007 Leapfrog Top Hospitals. The results were based on the Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey, a rating system that provides an up-to-the-minute assessment of a hospital’s quality and safety. The survey is the most complete and current assessment of hospital quality and safety available.
• Cook Children’s Medical Center is ranked in the top 5 percent of the nation’s hospitals for nursing excellence.
• For more than 90 years, Cook Children’s has provided high-level care to patients from 120 counties and 35 states.
• Cook Children’s operates more than 30 primary care pediatric locations, two urgent care centers, six outpatient clinic-based specialties in seven locations and 15 hospital-based specialties.
• Cook Children’s Emergency Department is the only EMS-designated pediatric trauma center in Tarrant County, Texas, and treats nearly 70,000 patients each year.
• Cook Children’s Physician Network is the largest multi-specialty physician group in the North Texas region.

Cook Children’s by the numbers

(Fiscal Year Oct. 1, 2006 – Sept. 30, 2007) 

• Cook Children’s records more than one million patient encounters each year. 
• Licensed for 285 beds 
• Emergency Department visits – 70,431 
• Urgent Care visits – 36,854 (20,766 Fort Worth, 14,776 Hurst, 1,312 Lewisville) 
• Medical Center admissions – 10,746 
• Surgeries – 14,751 (3,593 inpatient, 11,158 outpatient)
• Heart catheterizations – 465 
• Cardiothoracic surgery procedures – 441  
• Stem cell/bone marrow transplants – 26 
• Patient transports – 2,058 (1,570 by ambulance, 218 by airplane, 270 by helicopter) 
• Neonatal Intensive Care Unit admissions – 749 
• Pediatric Intensive Care Unit admissions – 1,263 
• Home Health nursing visits – 2,457 
• Home Health rehabilitation visits – 1,595 
• Rehabilitation care (outpatient visits) – 50,575 
• Primary care and specialty pediatricians located in Tarrant, Denton and Hood counties - 225 (74 primary care, 151 specialty) 
• Specialty clinic visits – 244,321 
• Community/low income visits – 34,028 
• Pediatric office visits – 428,510 
• Uncompensated care provided - $225.5 million 
• Physician Network charity care provided - $40 million