October 12, 2015 | (10) Comments

When my children, Ben and Emily, were young, one of my greatest hopes for them was that as adults, they would do something that they could be completely passionate about.

I think for the most part, they are living that. Ben works in sales, and he’s really quite good at it. And Emily is an amazing mom to five young children – I don’t have to tell you what an incredible job that is. Although their daily work is different, I know they both get up every morning excited about the day, and that’s all that I could have hoped for.

Believe it or not, that’s my same hope for each Texas Children’s employee. I’m excited every day that I walk through the doors of Texas Children’s Hospital, and I’m happiest when I know you share that excitement. When you are fulfilled, enjoying your work and teeming with passion and ideas, that’s when we as an organization are at our best. That’s why I was so excited last week about the news that we’d been recognized as the No. 5 Best Place to Work in Houston by the Houston Business Journal among companies with more than 1,000 employees. HBJ BPTW logo

For 10 consecutive years, your voice has landed Texas Children’s among the city’s top employers, and this year’s designation is the seventh time we’ve been recognized among the top five. And when I say your voice landed us here, it’s true. Companies were scored and selected to be on the list of Best Places to Work based on responses from anonymous surveys completed by employees like you. Employees rated their companies in areas like organizational goals, leadership, advancement opportunities, recognition and compensation, and the company’s climate for embracing innovation and ideas.

One employee who took the survey indicated that Texas Children’s Hospital had been his employer for 27 years and that he liked his job so much he planned to retire here. Other employees expressed similar sentiments, but the most telling testament of who we are as an organization actually came from someone outside of Texas Children’s. Sarah Maytum, our Director of Patient and Family Services, represented Texas Children’s at the Best Places to Work celebration luncheon. As Sarah approached the stage, one of the presenters handed her the award and whispered, “Thank you for saving my two children.”

What better recognition is there? Of course, Sarah didn’t personally provide the care for those patients, but she took great pride in acknowledging the sentiment, as I’m sure many of you would. I sure did. Because we are part of an organization that has that kind of impact on families’ lives. It’s what we do, and it’s who we are. How many people can say that about their work or their organization?

Once you work here, you understand what we have at the core of Texas Children’s – our infinite passion, our unified focus on our mission, our drive to advance the field, and our care for and service to each other and to our patients and their families. That’s why we’re no. 5 on the list of Best Places to Work in Houston. But more importantly, it’s why we’re no. 1 to parents like the one who thanked Sarah last week.

Thank you for all you do to make our organization what it is today. Congratulations Texas Children’s!

September 25, 2015 | (3) Comments
MPR1378 US NEWS Ranking By the Numbers
Click for larger image.

Here at Texas Children’s Hospital, we talk quite a bit about our U.S.News and World Report ranking and its importance. Each year, approximately 184 freestanding children’s hospitals in the country submit data on 10 pediatric subspecialties. For each of those subspecialties, teams of leaders, clinicians and employees are working together all year long to gather and validate our data, analyze our results as compared to our peers, look at best practices and determine what improvements we need to hard wire into our care processes. And as we begin a new fiscal year, we consider the impact this year’s results will have.

The U.S. News Best Children’s Hospitals rankings measure and cast a spotlight on the quality of our patient care and on our patients’ outcomes. In the 2015-2016 rankings, Texas Children’s Hospital maintained the no. 4 spot in the nation. Let me say that again: no. 4 in the nation. And we were once again listed on the Honor Roll, which recognizes hospitals that rank in the top 10 percent in at least three specialties. We had six services in the top 10 percent, and three achieved the no. 2 ranking in the country.

Now I’ll admit I like to be first as much as anyone, and here at Texas Children’s where we are an organization of high achieving, passionate team members who lead tirelessly day in and day out, it rankles us just a bit that we keep coming in fourth. But let’s explore what being no. 4 in the nation really means.

From a measurement perspective, our survey results demonstrate how hard we’re working as an organization to deliver high quality care to our patients. The more consistently we deliver high quality care and the safer we deliver that care to our patients, the better their outcomes are, and the better our overall numbers are. Our rankings in the 10 subspecialty areas included in the survey are the result of a methodology that weighs outcome and care-related measures, such as nursing care, advanced technology, credentialing, outcomes, best practices, infection prevention, and reputation, among other factors.

And when you consider what’s measured by the survey and our relatively short history as a children’s hospital, you can appreciate what an incredible reflection our no. 4 ranking really is – particularly in comparison with the esteemed institutions that sit at nos. 1, 2 and 3, including Boston Children’s Hospital, founded in 1869; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, founded in 1855; and Cincinnati Children’s, founded in 1883.

Think about it. We were founded many decades later in 1954. Yet, here we stand on par with the other preeminent teaching children’s hospitals in the U.S. We debuted on U.S. News’ first honor roll in 2009, alongside these three historic pediatric centers. Today, Texas Children’s is world renowned for our advancements in pediatric subspecialty care.

Our ranking is just one aspect of our incredible trajectory and just one reflection of the many amazing advancements of our clinical programs, our employees, and of the gifted physicians, scientists and clinical staff who serve our patients. In six decades, we’ve done just about as well as any children’s hospital in the United States, maybe even the world.

To some, the survey might still appear to simply be a contest of “popularity.” And for many years, the methodology did indeed focus primarily on hospitals’ reputational scores. But what used to be a contest of popularity, has become a national benchmark survey that heavily scores clinical outcomes, best practices and infection prevention.  These are quality and safety indicators that mean the difference for every patient in our care and drive each of us in our work every day.

So I believe we absolutely should take great pride in being no. 4, but I also believe “just about as well as” is not good enough when we consider the precious lives in our hands. The responsibility is ours – not to figure out how to be no. 1, but to raise our performance bar on quality patient care, on consistency and on overall excellence as an organization.

We must constantly question ourselves and our colleagues about how we can make the care processes better for our patients. Are there certain structures that we should pay attention to? Are there outcomes around which we should drive higher performance? What do our survey results suggest we can do better? And not just for the 10 subspecialties this survey focuses on – we are striving for the same high quality in all 40 of Texas Children’s pediatric subspecialties. Our rankings are a reflection of our actions and our focus. If we keep both on course, the numbers will follow.

Our national ranking is important – but it is not the end game. It is not why we care, why we drive ourselves to constantly do better. Our pursuits and our actions here at Texas Children’s are not for prizes or recognition, but rather for the fulfillment of our mission. We are driven by an intense desire to ensure the best possible outcomes for every child, woman and family who comes hopeful and expectant to our doorstep. And our “prize” is actually in the improved quality of life they’re afforded because we’ve given them our best.

 

August 6, 2015 | (38) Comments

Making tough decisions typically is not fun. But leaders must have the discernment to make tough calls every day, and as President and CEO of Texas Children’s I am no exception. Yet what I’ve learned in my 25 years here is that if I make decisions that remain focused on what’s best for our patients and their families, we usually land on the right track and success follows.

That’s exactly what happened 20 years ago when Texas Children’s Physician-in-Chief Dr. Ralph D. Feigin and I were grappling with whether to start a network of pediatricians affiliated with Texas Children’s. It was the mid-90s, a time of great change for the health care industry. Several Houston-area pediatricians approached Dr. Feigin to talk about the challenges they were facing managing the business end of their practices while keeping up with what they do best – caring for patients. Hospitals across the country responded to similar concerns by creating pediatric primary care group networks. Many of them, however, did not do so well. They didn’t seem to have the appropriate leadership, business model or commitment to high quality care and service.

Knowing this, Dr. Feigin and I were apprehensive about starting a group practice affiliated with Texas Children’s. But we knew it was the right thing to do for our patients. We knew we needed to create a way for families to access high quality primary care to compliment the comprehensive pediatric subspecialty care provided at Texas Children’s.

By forming Texas Children’s Pediatrics, we gave families in the Greater-Houston area the opportunity to receive pediatric primary care from leading pediatricians associated with one of the best children’s hospitals in the nation. We also allowed physicians to focus on medicine while business leaders and support staff at Texas Children’s handled their practices’ billing, payroll and other back-office responsibilities.

Texas Children’s Pediatrics has helped us take better care of the kids in our community, strengthened our ties to the best pediatricians in the Greater-Houston area and helped us nurture a pipeline of gifted young physicians trained at Baylor College of Medicine to our practices.

Doing what was best for our patients and families was the impetus for Texas Children’s Pediatrics. It is now the largest pediatric primary care network in the nation with more than 200 board-certified pediatricians and 50 practice locations. Each year, the group sees nearly 400,000 patients and has more than 1 million patient encounters. That’s a long way to come in just 20 years and a great reason to celebrate a milestone anniversary.

This video spotlights Texas Children’s Pediatrics’ 20th anniversary.

As part of my One Amazing Team tour, I am visiting all of our practice sites. This week, I stopped by Texas Children’s Pediatrics Ashford, our first practice, which, at that time, was owned by the four Rosenthal brothers – Drs. Morris, Paul, Ben and Harry Rosenthal. Drs. Ben and Harry Rosenthal are still caring for patients with the same zest and zeal they had when they started their careers. And now Dr. Ben’s daughter, Dr. Rachel Rosenthal Bray, has become part of the family’s legacy of dedication to and passion for pediatric primary care.

All of the Texas Children’s Pediatrics staff and employees I’ve visited during the tour thus far share this same passion. They are extremely talented people who are dedicated to meeting the Texas Children’s mission of creating a healthier future for children. Pursuing that common goal creates a network of expertise like no other.

Over the past two decades, I’ve been reminded time and again what a solid decision Texas Children’s Pediatrics was for our patients and families, and I am proud of what we have accomplished together. Congratulations to all of the staff and employees at Texas Children’s Pediatrics for 20 years of work extremely well done. I know there is much more success to come.