MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children's Hospital Receives $5M Gift for NICU

April 3, 2018

CHARLESTON, SC – A local man presented his wife with a Valentine’s Day gift that will transform generations of lives throughout South Carolina by providing world-class care for critical-needs babies.

David Stone chose to honor his wife, Laura, by making a gift to name the neonatal intensive care floor (NICU) at the MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital, scheduled to open in 2019. He presented the gift in a wrapped frame on Feb. 14.

“It’s going to be the most state-of-the-art children’s hospital in the country,” Mrs. Stone said after a recent tour of the construction site. “To be on the ground floor of that is huge.”

“After an awesome tour, I feel honored that we’re able to give and be a part of this,” Mr. Stone added.

The MUSC Children’s Hospital opened in 1987 and offers resources unavailable anywhere else in the state, including South Carolina’s only pediatric burn center, solid-organ and bone marrow transplant programs, Level I pediatric trauma center, pediatric rheumatology program and provider of heart surgery and interventional heart catheterization for children. Despite its achievements, the existing facility faces constraints due to space limitations.

The new MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital, located at the corner of Calhoun Street and Courtenay Drive, will provide the space needed for family-centered care, where children can heal in the most comfortable environment possible, with loved ones nearby. The NICU, which serves some of the most fragile babies in the Lowcountry and beyond, accounts for 82 of the new hospital’s 250 beds.

The floor will consist of mostly private rooms, plus rooms designed to accommodate twins, triplets and other multiple births. The MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital also will number among only a few facilities in the country to offer couplet-care rooms, where newborns and mothers can recover together in an intensive-care setting. The Stones’ gift will transform neonatal care at MUSC, according to MUSC President Dr. David Cole.

“This NICU will broaden the scope of intensive care to include not only the newborn, but also the entire family,” Cole said. “Family-centered care is central to the design of this entire hospital, and the Stones’ gift is helping us bring that dimension to the intensive-care setting.” 

The Stones’ gift brings the total amount raised in the six-year campaign for the MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital to $129.4 million. The campaign launched in 2014 as a means to provide funding necessary for both the structure itself and the programs within its walls. This gift to name the NICU marks completion of the first of several program-related floors and units for which MUSC seeks naming opportunities, including the heart and cancer floors, the emergency department and more. The campaign ends on June 30, 2020.

“We are humbled and overwhelmed by the generosity of our community, and we hear our stakeholders loud and clear; they want the best care for the children of South Carolina,” said MUSC Vice President for Development and Alumni Affairs Jim Fisher. “As we move into the final two years of our campaign, we have the capacity to focus on building the most advanced clinical areas for kids in need of specialized care for heart conditions, cancer, emergency medicine and more. Our work now moves into the phase where we really can imagine what’s possible.”

About MUSC Children’s Health

At MUSC Children’s Health we are imagining what’s possible for each and every child by providing the pediatric expertise your child deserves and needs. From promoting healthy lifestyles to offering life-saving treatments, we deliver comprehensive and compassionate care to children throughout South Carolina and beyond. Our integrated health care system consists of a 186-bed pediatric hospital providing the most advanced care possible in more than 26 specialty areas. We also provide the same depth and breadth of expertise in multiple neighborhood locations throughout the Lowcountry, offering primary, urgent and specialty care. As a Level 1 Trauma center, our pediatric emergency department specializes in providing emergency care for any serious injury or illness your child may experience at home, at school, or at play. Working collaboratively with pediatricians throughout the community, MUSC Children’s Health also provides after-hours care to children from birth to seventeen years of age in three different locations on weeknights, weekends and holidays. In addition to the clinical care MUSC Children’s Health provides, we are a major pediatric clinical research center conducting significant and ongoing research efforts through the Charles P. Darby Research Institute. This involvement allows us to enhance our ability to provide the highest level of care to children by translating laboratory advances to bedside, developing new technologies and providing clinical trials. To learn more about MUSC Children’s Health, visit MUSC Kids.