The pediatric orthopedic program at St. Louis Children’s is one of the largest in the Midwest, caring for nearly 30,000 pediatric patients each year. Staying at the forefront of this care means adapting to differing methods by which patients and families receive our services. Consequently, Washington University Physicians and St. Louis Children’s Hospital are continuously improving and creating new access points to meet the changing needs of our orthopedic patients.
From therapy and surgical services, to sports medicine and emergency room coverage for orthopedic injuries, Dr. Goldfarb joins the show to discuss where your patients can access pediatric orthopedic services by expert orthopedic physicians.
Selected Podcast
St. Louis Children’s and Washington University Pediatric Orthopedic Locations and Services
Featured Speaker:
Learn more about Charles (Chuck) Goldfarb, MD
Charles (Chuck) Goldfarb, MD
Charles (Chuck) Goldfarb, MD is a Washington University pediatric orthopedic surgeon at St. Louis Children's Hospital.Learn more about Charles (Chuck) Goldfarb, MD
Transcription:
Melanie Cole (Host): The pediatric orthopedic program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital is one of the largest in the Midwest, caring for nearly 30,000 pediatric patients each year. My guest to tell us about this today is Dr. Charles Goldfarb. He’s a Washington University Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Dr. Goldfarb, I’m so glad to have you with us to tell about all of the services that you offer. Please start by giving us an overview of pediatric orthopedic services at St. Louis Children’s Hospital off King’s Highway.
Dr. Charles Goldfarb (Guest): Well first, thank you for having me, it’s my pleasure to talk about the services that we offer in pediatric orthopedic surgery. I’ll begin by talking about our King’s Highway location, which is our primary location. It is affiliated with St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Barnes Jewish Hospitals are our main campus. On this campus, we provide the most complex care available, that would be significant traumas or major inpatient surgeries. We also provide simple outpatient surgeries, whether that be a simple surgery or an outpatient visit in the clinic, and so this is a location that you might send a patient with a complex hip disorder for example, or a complex trauma might be brought here by an ambulance, but it’s also a location that could serve for simple problems that need not travel further for their care.
Host: Tell us about what other orthopedic programs you offer at this location.
Dr. Goldfarb: So at our King’s Highway location we offer the full range of orthopedic services, and so I’ll start with the clinic. So in the clinic, we can evaluate a child or adolescent with essentially any orthopedic injury, whether that’s an abnormal walking pattern, whether that’s hip pain, whether that’s concern for an infection, or again whether that’s a major trauma. In our operating rooms, we range from very simple procedures to the most complex procedures in orthopedic surgery, so that would be complex hip case, that could be a limb lengthening where we make the limbs longer or an angular correction, that could be a complex spine surgery, so that would be whether it’s an idiopathic scoliosis or whether it’s a more complex spine trauma. We care for pretty much anything and everything at this site.
Host: What is St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s relationship to Washington University Orthopedics doctor?
Dr. Goldfarb: So our Washington University Orthopedic service consists of 9 pediatric orthopedic surgeons and several other doctors intimately associated with those same 9 surgeons. So for example, there are two hand surgeons that primarily practice pediatric orthopedics, and then there are other doctors such as tumor surgeon, such as microvascular surgeons, such as specialist hip surgeons that all contribute to the care we provide at Washington University Orthopedics. Our relationship with Children’s Hospital is a great one. It’s a long standing one, and we provide all orthopedic care at St. Louis Children’s Hospital itself and in the off shoot locations of St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Host: Then let’s talk about each off site location and describe some of the services that you offer. Please start with Children’s Specialty Care Center, the Young Athlete’s Center in West St. Louis County.
Dr. Goldfarb: So the Children’s Specialty Care Center, or shortened the CSCC was a major undertaking by the hospital about 4 years ago to build this large outpatient clinic space and operating rooms about 15 miles west of the main children’s hospital, and so the idea was to make our services more accessible for those who may not want to drive down to the King’s Highway location or may have trouble getting to the King’s Highway location, and so we’re trying to bring our services to a more convenient location. The clinics are similar to what we have at the King’s Highway location, meaning we can see and treat anything there in the outpatient clinic. The operating rooms are fantastic. They are limited to patients who can be treated as an outpatient, meaning we don’t have inpatient beds, and so we don’t do the most complex surgeries that require overnight stays, but we do a lot of surgery in this easily accessible, very convenient location. As part of the CSCC, we have a Young Athlete’s Center. The Young Athlete’s Center is a dedicated physical therapy space, which is impressive, highly technical space meant for recovering athletes, meant for educating athletes and families about injury prevention, and so this is a combined effort, that is the Young Athlete’s Center is a combined effort between Washington University Orthopedics and St. Louis Children’s Hospital Physical Therapy to provide a service for the community, which in our mind has not been previously provided, that is high level care, high level education for the young athlete.
Host: That’s very comprehensive and great multidisciplinary care. Dr. Goldfarb, now tell us about Progress West Hospital Medical Office Building, number 1 in St. Charles County.
Dr. Goldfarb: Right so Progress West is a relatively new endeavor that we have been providing emergency room coverage and clinical space over the last several years. Again, the idea is to make our services accessible to anyone in the St. Louis region and so by going a little further west to Progress West, we now have a clinic space to allow us to assess patients and if we can assess them and treat them there we do. If they need a higher level of care, we can transfer them to one of our two other locations. We also, and I’ll get to this later, again but we also cover the emergency department at Progress West, and so it’s just a way, again to provide our services where there may not have been ideal services for pediatric orthopedics prior to our arrival.
Host: Then let’s talk about that, aside from covering the ER at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, what other ERs do you cover in the St. Louis region?
Dr. Goldfarb: So we are providing pediatric orthopedic emergency room care at 2 additional hospitals. So that is the Missouri Baptist Hospital and the Progress West Hospital, both have essential pediatric emergency departments for children under the age of 18, and what happens is if your child is injured, may have a broken bone or a sprained ankle, they go to that emergency room, they are assessed by the emergency room team, and if they need our opinion or if they need us to come in and provide care, we will do that. Again, the beauty is these two locations are closer to many of our families, make it easier for many of our families, and we still have the option for severe injuries that need a higher level of care, those patients can be transferred to St. Louis Children’s Hospital on the main campus, but we try to treat the child at those outside emergency departments.
Host: Let’s talk about one more doctor, Orthopedic Injury Clinic at Washington University and Barnes Jewish Orthopedic Center in West St. Louis County.
Dr. Goldfarb: Thank you, so we started the Orthopedic Injury Clinic, I think it’s been about 5 years ago, and actually there’s two locations now. So one of those locations is in West County at our orthopedic center, and we actually have a second location in South County and the idea is that anyone can walk in from noon until 8pm Monday through Friday and also Saturday morning to be evaluated, and the idea is that an acute or new injury, whether that be an adult or a child, can come into this injury clinic and be evaluated. The providers do have pediatric orthopedic expertise but our age is from 5 years of age and higher for the orthopedic injury clinic. So it’s probably ideal for something or an injury that is a little less severe and which the family hopes to stay out of the emergency room. This is a way to get expertise which they may not get at an urgent care, but also in an easy, friendly, convenient setting.
Host: Dr. Goldfarb, so the providers can counsel their patients, does insurance coverage differ between locations, whether they’re a Washington University owned facility or a St. Louis Children’s Hospital owned facility or a joint owned facility?
Dr. Goldfarb: Yeah, great question. The idea for us to provide the same care with the same coverage everywhere, and so everywhere I go as a provider, the same insurance coverage exists. So if I am on your insurance plan at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, I’m on it in the emergency room at Missouri Baptist, and I’m on it at the Orthopedic Center, and so that’s one thing patients don’t have to worry about. If my name is on your insurance as a covered physician, then you can see me anywhere I go.
Host: Thank you for clarifying that. So tell us some exciting things that you’re doing in pediatric orthopedics, and what’s on the horizon, what’s new and exciting? What are you looking forward to?
Dr. Goldfarb: I think the great thing about what we do as a pediatric orthopedic group is we provide all levels of care. So what I mean by that is we can take care of you, and we can take care of a patient with a very simple fracture, and you can know that your patient is in good hands, but we also, and our goal is to take care of the more complex issues and help advance care in those more complex issues. So for example, I’ll give you a few, spine care. So if a patient has a complex spine anomaly or scoliosis, we are advancing the care of those patients with newer techniques and we’re also studying those techniques so that we help to confirm that what we are doing is cutting edge and can help patients in the future. Another area is the young adult hip, and so we’ve become more and more aware of problems in the young adult hip. We do a lot of hip arthroscopy to assess the hip when necessary and we’ve advanced the entire field by leading the way in the country and the world with understanding these types of issues. And the last example I would give would be clubfoot. We have one of the most respected doctors in the care of clubfoot in our group and we are considered experts, again nationally and internationally in this subspecialized area. So the message to all providers is that we want to take care of every type of pediatric orthopedic issue, whether that be something considered simple like a basic fracture, to the most complex possible orthopedic injury.
Host: As we wrap up, tell us how and when a physician should refer a patient to one of these locations and what can they expect from the orthopedic team at Children’s and Washington University?
Dr. Goldfarb: I hope that referring physicians will consider us for any condition that needs a different level of care or a different set of eyes or a different level of expertise. So if you have a child that has an orthopedic injury that may be not getting better or may simply be something that the provider is not routinely treating, then I hope the provider would consider sending that patient to us. As far as location, our goal is to treat the patient in the best location possible. We try to make that the most convenient location possible, but we want to make sure the child is treated in the best location. So if that child can be treated at our Progress West facility fantastic, if that child needs to be treated at the Children’s Specialty Care Center or at Children’s Hospital on King’s Highway, that’s fine too. We will treat the child where he or she can be treated safely and effectively.
Host: And what else would you like a referring physician to know about these locations and the services that you’re offering?
Dr. Goldfarb: We want to provide outstanding base care. We want to provide it in a way that families are comfortable, we want to inform families, and we want to give feedback to referring physicians, and so those are our expectations. We want to succeed at every level, patient interaction, referring physician interaction, and we want to make it easy for all of the above. Our expectations are high and we think that referring physicians should have those same high expectations. We ask a lot of our physicians and our team, and we want to be the best providers for children with orthopedic issues.
Host: Thank you so much Dr. Goldfarb for joining us today, telling us all about the locations and the services offered and the exciting things on the horizon. Thank you again for joining us. To consult with a specialist, or to learn more about services offered at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, please call Children’s Direct Physician Access Line at 1-800-678-HELP, that’s 1-800-678-4357. That wraps up this episode of Radio Rounds with St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Head on over to our website at stlouischildrens.org for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast informative as I did, please share on your social media and be sure to check out all the other fascinating podcasts in our library. I’m Melanie Cole.
Melanie Cole (Host): The pediatric orthopedic program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital is one of the largest in the Midwest, caring for nearly 30,000 pediatric patients each year. My guest to tell us about this today is Dr. Charles Goldfarb. He’s a Washington University Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Dr. Goldfarb, I’m so glad to have you with us to tell about all of the services that you offer. Please start by giving us an overview of pediatric orthopedic services at St. Louis Children’s Hospital off King’s Highway.
Dr. Charles Goldfarb (Guest): Well first, thank you for having me, it’s my pleasure to talk about the services that we offer in pediatric orthopedic surgery. I’ll begin by talking about our King’s Highway location, which is our primary location. It is affiliated with St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Barnes Jewish Hospitals are our main campus. On this campus, we provide the most complex care available, that would be significant traumas or major inpatient surgeries. We also provide simple outpatient surgeries, whether that be a simple surgery or an outpatient visit in the clinic, and so this is a location that you might send a patient with a complex hip disorder for example, or a complex trauma might be brought here by an ambulance, but it’s also a location that could serve for simple problems that need not travel further for their care.
Host: Tell us about what other orthopedic programs you offer at this location.
Dr. Goldfarb: So at our King’s Highway location we offer the full range of orthopedic services, and so I’ll start with the clinic. So in the clinic, we can evaluate a child or adolescent with essentially any orthopedic injury, whether that’s an abnormal walking pattern, whether that’s hip pain, whether that’s concern for an infection, or again whether that’s a major trauma. In our operating rooms, we range from very simple procedures to the most complex procedures in orthopedic surgery, so that would be complex hip case, that could be a limb lengthening where we make the limbs longer or an angular correction, that could be a complex spine surgery, so that would be whether it’s an idiopathic scoliosis or whether it’s a more complex spine trauma. We care for pretty much anything and everything at this site.
Host: What is St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s relationship to Washington University Orthopedics doctor?
Dr. Goldfarb: So our Washington University Orthopedic service consists of 9 pediatric orthopedic surgeons and several other doctors intimately associated with those same 9 surgeons. So for example, there are two hand surgeons that primarily practice pediatric orthopedics, and then there are other doctors such as tumor surgeon, such as microvascular surgeons, such as specialist hip surgeons that all contribute to the care we provide at Washington University Orthopedics. Our relationship with Children’s Hospital is a great one. It’s a long standing one, and we provide all orthopedic care at St. Louis Children’s Hospital itself and in the off shoot locations of St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Host: Then let’s talk about each off site location and describe some of the services that you offer. Please start with Children’s Specialty Care Center, the Young Athlete’s Center in West St. Louis County.
Dr. Goldfarb: So the Children’s Specialty Care Center, or shortened the CSCC was a major undertaking by the hospital about 4 years ago to build this large outpatient clinic space and operating rooms about 15 miles west of the main children’s hospital, and so the idea was to make our services more accessible for those who may not want to drive down to the King’s Highway location or may have trouble getting to the King’s Highway location, and so we’re trying to bring our services to a more convenient location. The clinics are similar to what we have at the King’s Highway location, meaning we can see and treat anything there in the outpatient clinic. The operating rooms are fantastic. They are limited to patients who can be treated as an outpatient, meaning we don’t have inpatient beds, and so we don’t do the most complex surgeries that require overnight stays, but we do a lot of surgery in this easily accessible, very convenient location. As part of the CSCC, we have a Young Athlete’s Center. The Young Athlete’s Center is a dedicated physical therapy space, which is impressive, highly technical space meant for recovering athletes, meant for educating athletes and families about injury prevention, and so this is a combined effort, that is the Young Athlete’s Center is a combined effort between Washington University Orthopedics and St. Louis Children’s Hospital Physical Therapy to provide a service for the community, which in our mind has not been previously provided, that is high level care, high level education for the young athlete.
Host: That’s very comprehensive and great multidisciplinary care. Dr. Goldfarb, now tell us about Progress West Hospital Medical Office Building, number 1 in St. Charles County.
Dr. Goldfarb: Right so Progress West is a relatively new endeavor that we have been providing emergency room coverage and clinical space over the last several years. Again, the idea is to make our services accessible to anyone in the St. Louis region and so by going a little further west to Progress West, we now have a clinic space to allow us to assess patients and if we can assess them and treat them there we do. If they need a higher level of care, we can transfer them to one of our two other locations. We also, and I’ll get to this later, again but we also cover the emergency department at Progress West, and so it’s just a way, again to provide our services where there may not have been ideal services for pediatric orthopedics prior to our arrival.
Host: Then let’s talk about that, aside from covering the ER at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, what other ERs do you cover in the St. Louis region?
Dr. Goldfarb: So we are providing pediatric orthopedic emergency room care at 2 additional hospitals. So that is the Missouri Baptist Hospital and the Progress West Hospital, both have essential pediatric emergency departments for children under the age of 18, and what happens is if your child is injured, may have a broken bone or a sprained ankle, they go to that emergency room, they are assessed by the emergency room team, and if they need our opinion or if they need us to come in and provide care, we will do that. Again, the beauty is these two locations are closer to many of our families, make it easier for many of our families, and we still have the option for severe injuries that need a higher level of care, those patients can be transferred to St. Louis Children’s Hospital on the main campus, but we try to treat the child at those outside emergency departments.
Host: Let’s talk about one more doctor, Orthopedic Injury Clinic at Washington University and Barnes Jewish Orthopedic Center in West St. Louis County.
Dr. Goldfarb: Thank you, so we started the Orthopedic Injury Clinic, I think it’s been about 5 years ago, and actually there’s two locations now. So one of those locations is in West County at our orthopedic center, and we actually have a second location in South County and the idea is that anyone can walk in from noon until 8pm Monday through Friday and also Saturday morning to be evaluated, and the idea is that an acute or new injury, whether that be an adult or a child, can come into this injury clinic and be evaluated. The providers do have pediatric orthopedic expertise but our age is from 5 years of age and higher for the orthopedic injury clinic. So it’s probably ideal for something or an injury that is a little less severe and which the family hopes to stay out of the emergency room. This is a way to get expertise which they may not get at an urgent care, but also in an easy, friendly, convenient setting.
Host: Dr. Goldfarb, so the providers can counsel their patients, does insurance coverage differ between locations, whether they’re a Washington University owned facility or a St. Louis Children’s Hospital owned facility or a joint owned facility?
Dr. Goldfarb: Yeah, great question. The idea for us to provide the same care with the same coverage everywhere, and so everywhere I go as a provider, the same insurance coverage exists. So if I am on your insurance plan at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, I’m on it in the emergency room at Missouri Baptist, and I’m on it at the Orthopedic Center, and so that’s one thing patients don’t have to worry about. If my name is on your insurance as a covered physician, then you can see me anywhere I go.
Host: Thank you for clarifying that. So tell us some exciting things that you’re doing in pediatric orthopedics, and what’s on the horizon, what’s new and exciting? What are you looking forward to?
Dr. Goldfarb: I think the great thing about what we do as a pediatric orthopedic group is we provide all levels of care. So what I mean by that is we can take care of you, and we can take care of a patient with a very simple fracture, and you can know that your patient is in good hands, but we also, and our goal is to take care of the more complex issues and help advance care in those more complex issues. So for example, I’ll give you a few, spine care. So if a patient has a complex spine anomaly or scoliosis, we are advancing the care of those patients with newer techniques and we’re also studying those techniques so that we help to confirm that what we are doing is cutting edge and can help patients in the future. Another area is the young adult hip, and so we’ve become more and more aware of problems in the young adult hip. We do a lot of hip arthroscopy to assess the hip when necessary and we’ve advanced the entire field by leading the way in the country and the world with understanding these types of issues. And the last example I would give would be clubfoot. We have one of the most respected doctors in the care of clubfoot in our group and we are considered experts, again nationally and internationally in this subspecialized area. So the message to all providers is that we want to take care of every type of pediatric orthopedic issue, whether that be something considered simple like a basic fracture, to the most complex possible orthopedic injury.
Host: As we wrap up, tell us how and when a physician should refer a patient to one of these locations and what can they expect from the orthopedic team at Children’s and Washington University?
Dr. Goldfarb: I hope that referring physicians will consider us for any condition that needs a different level of care or a different set of eyes or a different level of expertise. So if you have a child that has an orthopedic injury that may be not getting better or may simply be something that the provider is not routinely treating, then I hope the provider would consider sending that patient to us. As far as location, our goal is to treat the patient in the best location possible. We try to make that the most convenient location possible, but we want to make sure the child is treated in the best location. So if that child can be treated at our Progress West facility fantastic, if that child needs to be treated at the Children’s Specialty Care Center or at Children’s Hospital on King’s Highway, that’s fine too. We will treat the child where he or she can be treated safely and effectively.
Host: And what else would you like a referring physician to know about these locations and the services that you’re offering?
Dr. Goldfarb: We want to provide outstanding base care. We want to provide it in a way that families are comfortable, we want to inform families, and we want to give feedback to referring physicians, and so those are our expectations. We want to succeed at every level, patient interaction, referring physician interaction, and we want to make it easy for all of the above. Our expectations are high and we think that referring physicians should have those same high expectations. We ask a lot of our physicians and our team, and we want to be the best providers for children with orthopedic issues.
Host: Thank you so much Dr. Goldfarb for joining us today, telling us all about the locations and the services offered and the exciting things on the horizon. Thank you again for joining us. To consult with a specialist, or to learn more about services offered at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, please call Children’s Direct Physician Access Line at 1-800-678-HELP, that’s 1-800-678-4357. That wraps up this episode of Radio Rounds with St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Head on over to our website at stlouischildrens.org for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast informative as I did, please share on your social media and be sure to check out all the other fascinating podcasts in our library. I’m Melanie Cole.