HOUSTON -- At the neonatal intensive care unit at Texas Children’s Hospital, it is heartbreaking to see sick children — until you talk to Dr. Ralph Feigin. 

“When I walk into the NICU, I say 95 percent of these babies are going to go home healthy,” he said. “When I started in medicine, there were no NICUs.”

Dr. Feigin has not only watched health care for children get better; he has been at the forefront of making it happen.

“My philosophy is I like to pursue perfection in everything,” he said. “No one will ever be perfect, but they will never be excellent if they don’t pursue perfection.

“People would say I am demanding but in a nice way,” Dr. Feigin said. “It’s possible.” His demand for excellence has paid off. Since Dr. Feigin arrived 31 years ago, TCH has gone from treating 15,000 kids a year to half a million.

He has trained 44 percent of the pediatricians who practice in Houston.

There is even a building named after him: The Feigin Center. It wasn’t his idea.

“Well I am pleased for what we do for the children of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation — that’s what makes me happiest,” he said.

He spent his own childhood in New York City. He went to med school in Boston and remembers what pediatricians couldn’t do in 1963.

“President Kennedy and Jackie had a 4 pound, 5 ounce infant,” he said. “I was in Boston then. That baby could not be saved; today that’s nothing”

Today you find little Amanda Reyes at TCH, born nine weeks premature at 2 pounds, 9 ounces. She is now a little more than 4 pounds and is growing.

In the next five to 10 years, Dr. Feigin believes there will be a major breakthrough in matters of the brain and treatment for disorders such as autism.

“We are at a point in pediatric medicine where we have exquisite neuroimaging techniques, we understand the function of genes and can apply that knowledge to treat those disorders for the first time in history,” he said.

Dr. Feigin is stepping down from administrative duties, which leaves him more time to teach and spread his passion to one more generation of doctors.