Entergy's $500K donation helps power Children’s campaign

Published on Monday, November 26, 2018

By: Annie Oeth, aoeth@umc.edu

Entergy Mississippi is investing in the families they serve through a $500,000 donation to the Campaign for Children’s of Mississippi.

The donation from the company, celebrating 95 years of doing business in Mississippi, was announced Monday in a news conference on the UMMC campus.

”Children’s health care is important to any company,” said Haley Fisackerly, president and CEO of Entergy Mississippi, “and we are proud to partner with Children’s of Mississippi and serve this new facility.”

The campaign, a $100 million effort to help fund UMMC’s pediatric expansion now under construction, has raised more than $67 million since 2016.

“Entergy Mississippi generates the electricity that allows the Medical Center to provide world-class health care, and Entergy is helping fuel a pediatric expansion at UMMC that is truly transformational,” said Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. “We thank Entergy for being our partner in health care and for making this key investment in the health of our children.”

Entergy Mississippi serves about 449,000 customers in 45 of Mississippi’s 82 counties. Entergy companies employ some 2,200 Mississippians, and more than 1,200 Entergy retirees live in the state.

The energy provider’s philanthropic focus is to improve the quality of life in the communities it serves through investing in education, improving the environment and finding solutions to poverty. Entergy Mississippi contributed more than $2 million to over 400 nonprofit organizations in the state in 2017.

“Entergy strives to contribute to a society that is healthy, educated, environmentally safe and productive,” said Fisackerly. “Having the care that’s needed right here in Mississippi is important to parents, and it is important to Entergy.”

The pediatric expansion adjacent to the state’s only children’s hospital, Batson, includes 88 private neonatal intensive care rooms. The current neonatal intensive care unit at UMMC was built for about 30 babies but routinely offers care to three times that number.

Also included is additional space for pediatric intensive care and for surgery, a department that is quickly outgrowing its current location.

“We are caring for the state’s smallest and most medically fragile newborns and are seeing outcomes similar to the nation’s top children’s hospitals,” said Dr. Mary Taylor, Suzan B. Thames Chair, professor and chair of pediatrics, “but we are achieving these results in a hospital that we’ve outgrown. This expansion will provide us with a state-of-the-art facility that will match the skills of our expert caregivers. ”

When Batson Children’s Hospital patients need imaging such as CT scans and MRIs, they travel inside the hospital about a quarter of a mile to an imaging center designed for adults. In this new construction, a pediatric imaging center will be inside the children’s hospital and will be kid-friendly.

An outpatient specialty clinic will be close by, putting experts in pediatric disciplines including cardiology, neurology, urology, endocrinology, gastroenterology and orthopaedics in one location on the UMMC campus.

“Children’s of Mississippi works to touch the lives of all of the children in this state and help them reach their full potential,” said Guy Giesecke, CEO of Children’s, an organization that includes Batson as well as clinics around the state. “Entergy’s gift will help us provide Mississippi’s children the best of care close to home.”