Tucson is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. without a medical center dedicated to children. Currently, pediatric in-patient care in Tucson is scattered across ten different locations, with approximately 71 percent of patients receiving care at UMC and one other hospital in the city.

Watch this video
about our
young patients
and their needs

Our population growth is taxing current facilities. University Medical Center's pediatric units are full more than 100 days of the year, many pediatric patients cannot receive the inpatient care they need and often must travel to Phoenix, Los Angeles or even farther to be treated.

Centralization of children's services will lead to a large, state-of-the-art pediatric intensive-care unit and a much-needed pediatric emergency room. It will also prompt program expansion and the institution of new, necessary services - giving our children the advanced care they need right here, right now.

Working Together for Tucson's Children

Diamond Children's Medical Center is a partnership between University Medical Center and The University of Arizona Steele Children's Research Center focused on bringing advanced care and compassion to all children in Southern Arizona. In fact, it will be the only children's health facility in the state connected to an academic medical center. As a result, children will have the advantage of being treated by leading experts with the latest diagnostics and therapeutic procedures.

University Medical Center - Pediatric services have always been a vital element of both inpatient and outpatient care at University Medical Center, the primary teaching hospital for The University of Arizona College of Medicine. In 2007 UMC provided services for over 6,000 pediatric patients and more importantly, it provided specialized pediatric care to almost 900 patients - twice as many as the rest of Tucson's hospitals combined.

The University of Arizona Steele Children's Research Center - The goal of Steele Children's Research Center is to advance medical knowledge in order to improve the health of children in Arizona and throughout the world. At any given time, approximately 100 research projects are under way at the Steele Center in areas ranging from cancer to lung disease. In addition to conducting cutting-edge research, Steele Center physicians treat thousands of children from Southern Arizona and around the state.

The University of Arizona College of Medicine - For more than 40 years the physician faculty of The University of Arizona College of Medicine has been educating new physicians, making medical advances and providing top levels of care in pediatrics and numerous medical specialties. 

About Diamond Children's Medical Center 

Diamond Children's Medical Center is designed to provide the most advanced health care possible while maintaining a comfortable, healing atmosphere for children and their families.

Newly constructed floors at University Medical Center house the children's medical center. The new emergency and trauma center on the first floor contains a separate pediatric emergency department with its own entrance, waiting room and pediatric triage area, so that children are treated separately from adults by emergency physicians who specialize in pediatrics. Open 24 hours a day year-round, this new pediatric emergency department is the only such facility in Southern Arizona.

The next two floors house 88 critical-care and medical-surgical beds to serve the two emergency units.

Diamond Children's Medical Center occupies the fourth, fifth and sixth floors. A dedicated ground floor entrance leads to an elevator with direct access to the new children's facility. Future plans call for a children's operating room with children's pre-operative and post-operative area.

The total cost for just the Diamond Children's medical facility is estimated to be $55 million. Funding for completion must come from external sources - primarily charitable giving.

Diamond Children's Medical Center opened in 2010.