Second pediatric surgeon joins hospital

Starting this month, Kalispell Regional Healthcare will have around-the-clock surgical coverage for children with the addition of a second pediatric surgeon to the team. The hire is one of the final pieces the hospital needs to offer a full line of pediatric intensive-care services.

Dr. Gavin Falk is expected to join the pediatric services program at Kalispell Regional by Aug. 15. He will be joining Dr. Federico Seifarth, who was the first surgeon to join the program in April.

Mellody Sharpton, the hospital director of communications and marketing, said with two pediatric surgeons on staff she expects a fully operational pediatric intensive-care unit to unroll sometime this fall.

“We’re already able to provide services and take care of patients, but we’re really working on collecting the last few specialists needed to have 100 percent of the doctors needed for this service,” Sharpton said.

Since last year Kalispell Regional Healthcare has added more than a dozen pediatric sub-specialists in neonatology, behavioral health, cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, neurology, oncology and hematology, ophthalmology, surgery, anesthesia, intensive care and hospitalist services.

Sharpton said the hospital is still searching for a pediatric neurology surgeon and a pulmonologist. She said a pediatric intensivist is expected to join the team sometime in September.

The new service temporarily will be housed in the hospital’s existing adult intensive-care unit, which will allow the hospital to offer a full list of services while it works to complete a 190,000-square-foot pediatric center.

The center, a roughly $40 million project, will dedicate a three-story building to specialized care for women and children. Previously, families with a child facing a disease or in need of intensive surgery historically have left Montana for places such as Spokane, Seattle, Denver or Salt Lake City to tap into medical services.

Specializing in surgery for babies and children, Falk and Seifarth will be set up to perform a broad spectrum of procedures from common operations such as appendix removal to more complicated procedures such as correcting chest wall deformities.

Sharpton said both surgeons are trained in minimally invasive techniques that focus on quick recovery and reduce pain levels.

Falk attended medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Before accepting the position in Kalispell, he was completing his pediatric surgery fellowship at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in the Miami Children’s Health System in Florida. Prior to that, he completed his general surgery residency at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, and his internship at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

“I’m thrilled to join an amazing team of pediatric sub-specialists and am excited about the impact this program will have on pediatric care in this state, ” Falk said.

Seifarth said it was time for the addition of a second surgeon. Since he arrived in Montana less than three months ago, Seifarth said he has treated more than 150 children and performed more than 65 operations.

He said four of those surgeries were rare Hirschsprung’s disease procedures performed within one week.

Hirschsprung’s disease is also called congenital megacolon. It prevents colon walls from being able to relax and pass stools through the large bowel, which causes chronic obstruction.

Seifarth said this issue typically occurs once in every 5,000 live births — that translates to two or three babies a year in Montana.

“So why do we have four at once? Doctors can miss this diagnosis easily because constipation is so common,” Seifarth said. “Diagnosing four children in a short time is a reflection of being an underserved state. Not having specialists here means that rare things can go unrecognized and untreated.”

He said with the hospital’s expansion of pediatric services and the growing number of specialists joining the team, he believes that would change for Montanans.

“We’re experiencing a shift of care for pediatric patients,” he said, “And, for the state’s children, that’s a very exciting prospect.”

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.