Ranken provides care for children with complex medical conditions such as brain injuries or complications due to premature birth,[2] as well as interdisciplinary, specialized care, rehabilitation, and treatment for children 2-weeks to 21 years of age.[1] Ranken Jordan is equipped with nursing care, education facilitation services, physical, occupational, speech, respiratory, and recreation therapies, outpatient therapy evaluations and treatment services, comprehensive, interdisciplinary child development programming and social services.
The facility treats children with injuries and illnesses including, but not limited to:[3]
The facility includes: 60 inpatient pediatric beds, therapy gym and aqua therapy pool, developmental testing and child-centered activity areas, computer center, art therapy room, music and movement room, life skills kitchen, and a fully accessible playground both indoor and outdoor. Ranken Jordan is currently the only pediatric specialty hospital in Missouri, and one of only five such facilities in the nation.[2] Children are admitted by referrals from other pediatric health care facilities and from children's hospitals.
Ranken Jordan began as a small facility in St. Louis, Missouri on April 9, 1941 through the philanthropy of founder, Mary Ranken Jordan. It was a small, yet state-of-the-art facility, located in the country. Children came to convalesce from polio, osteomyelitis and bone tuberculosis. Located west of Lindbergh Boulevard, the facility had no air conditioning. Many summer nights, the children would sleep on porch roofs, built especially for that purpose. As the children's bodies healed, they went on their way and others arrived to fill the beds. Mary Ranken Jordan visited regularly to have tea and talk with the children, all of whom she knew by name. The total expenses for the first year of Ranken Jordan were just over $15,100. Sixty-five years later, the average cost to run Ranken Jordan for a single day is $8,200. Mary Ranken-Jordan died in 1962 and left a sizable endowment to maintain her dream. In 2004, the hospital opened its current location in Maryland Heights.[4]
