Parkland Memorial Hospital - Capabilities

Capabilities

Parkland is the Dallas County public hospital; funds are primarily provided by a specially designated property tax on Dallas County residents.

Parkland serves as one of the area's three Level 1 Trauma centers (alongside Baylor University Medical Center, also in Dallas, and John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth), a primary care center for Dallas County residents, and (along with UT Southwestern) as a medical and surgical referral center for North Texas and parts of Southern Oklahoma. Thus, virtually all medical and surgical subspecialties are represented—which makes Parkland a destination for post-graduate medical training. Its Burns Unit is famous for the Parkland Formula for fluid resuscitation, developed by Charles R. Baxter in the 1960s.

At 968 licensed beds, Parkland ranks among the largest teaching hospitals in the nation. Texas Woman's University began its Bachelor of Science nursing program at Parkland in 1954 and it is still located within walking distance of the Parkland campus. Parkland also serves as the major teaching hospital of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

It has the distinction of delivering more infants under one roof than any other hospital in the nation, averaging 15-16,000 deliveries per year. Parkland Memorial has nine prenatal clinics and employs 72 doctors training to become obstetricians-gynecologists and 45 nurse-midwives. In 2005, the staff delivered 15,590 babies, an average of more than 42 infants per day. Parkland created one of the first high-risk antenatal units in the nation and had the first neonatal intensive care unit in North Texas.

Parkland is also the base for Biotel, the medical direction system used by Dallas Fire-Rescue and most of the other fire departments in Dallas County.