Children's Hospital and University of Colorado Hospital will announce plans today to develop a maternal-fetal and neonatal program, marking the biggest collaboration between the two since Children's moved to its new Aurora campus last year.

Right now, high-risk infants must be transported to Children's from other hospitals for treatment because Children's doesn't currently deliver babies. The new Colorado High Risk Maternity and Newborn Program will allow mothers to give birth at Children's, where the baby and mother can both immediately receive treatment from fetal specialists and maternal fetal specialists.

"This is our first major initiative to take advantage of being on this campus" with University Hospital and the University of Colorado Medical School, said Jim Shmerling, president and CEO of Children's. "Bringing the physician scientists together will accelerate discoveries. Already, we're seeing advances in diagnosis that allow us to identify problems in utero."

Earlier this year, the University of Colorado Medical School received a $76 million research grant from the National Institutes of Health to speed up the application of laboratory discoveries to patient care. Some of that funding will go toward the new maternity-fetal program with Children's.

Children's plans to begin construction on the Colorado High Risk Maternity and Newborn Program facility within six months and expects to open the center about two years later. The facility will add another 25 clinical physicians, not including researchers, and will have as many as 200 beds. That includes the 108 beds already part of the hospital's neo-natal intensive- care program.

Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver has offered a single facility for maternal and fetal care for 20 years, delivering more than 10,000 premature and high-risk babies. The center's Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children treats patients throughout Colorado as well as Wyoming, Kansas and western Nebraska.

Dr. Reggie Washington, Rocky Mountain Hospital's chief medical officer, said his hospital and Children's employ "two entirely different health care models." Rocky Mountain's doctors are either in private practice or employed solely by the hospital, while Children's is a teaching hospital with a research mission.

"The two hospitals are on some level competing, but we really are very different institutions, and one is not better than another," Washington said.

Children's said it is focused on high-risk maternal and fetal care and doesn't have plans to move into more conventional maternity services.

"Our intent is to provide complementary services, not to compete with other hospitals,"

Shmerling said. "We're going to be supporting the services of other institutions by training and developing the interventions that they will use."

Colorado High Risk Maternity and Newborn Program

* What it is: A collaboration between Children's Hospital and University of Colorado Hospital to be located at Children's. The program will focus on high-risk expectant mothers and their newborns, allowing the mother to give birth in the same facility where she and her child will receive treatment.

* When it will open: Construction should begin in about six months, and the facility is expected to open 18 to 24 months later.

* Of note: Children's Hospital and University Hospital medical teams already have performed four deliveries of high-risk infants with serious heart conditions that can be fatal at birth.