Latest / Becker’s Healthcare -- Pediatric Leadership Podcast / Advancing Children's Healthcare: A Conversation with Matthew Cook, CEO of the Children's Hospital Association

Transcript

Advancing Children's Healthcare: A Conversation with Matthew Cook, CEO of the Children's Hospital Association · Becker’s Healthcare -- Pediatric Leadership Podcast

• 0:00
  This is Chris Sosa with the Becker's Healthcare
• 0:02
  podcast. I'm thrilled to be joined by Matt
• 0:04
  Cook, president and CEO of the Children's Hospital
• 0:06
  Association.
• 0:07
  Matt, thank you for joining us today.
• 0:10
  Thanks for having me, Chris. I'm, excited to
• 0:12
  be here with you.
• 0:14
  Wonderful. For our listeners who are not familiar
• 0:16
  with you and and or your background, could
• 0:18
  you please introduce yourself and tell us a
• 0:20
  bit about it?
• 0:22
  Sure. Absolutely. So
• 0:24
  I have,
• 0:25
  been working in the health care industry for
• 0:27
  about twenty five years.
• 0:29
  A good part of my career, I started
• 0:31
  out in management consulting
• 0:34
  and worked for exclusively in health care and
• 0:36
  worked for a number of hospitals
• 0:38
  across the country, including a number of children's
• 0:41
  hospitals.
• 0:42
  And,
• 0:44
  about the midpoint of my career, 1 of
• 0:46
  my clients was the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
• 0:50
  And they were in the process of creating
• 0:52
  a chief strategy officer role and asked if
• 0:54
  I would,
• 0:56
  consider it. And I thought at the time,
• 0:57
  wow.
• 0:58
  I can,
• 1:00
  step off the road and really kind of
• 1:02
  focus on children's health with 1 client. And
• 1:05
  I was like, how great is that?
• 1:07
  And,
• 1:08
  and so I was there for a number
• 1:09
  of years and then was recruited out to
• 1:12
  Indiana
• 1:13
  to be the president of Riley Children's Health,
• 1:16
  which is part of the IU Health System,
• 1:19
  and then was recruited out to the Bay
• 1:21
  Area where I ran the 2 children's hospitals
• 1:24
  for UCSF, the 1 in San Francisco,
• 1:28
  and the 1 in Oakland.
• 1:30
  And at that time, I was also on
• 1:32
  the board of of CHA and was a
• 1:35
  member of the public policy committee.
• 1:37
  And when my predecessor,
• 1:38
  Mark,
• 1:39
  decided
• 1:40
  to, retire from CHA,
• 1:43
  the board asked me to take his place,
• 1:45
  and
• 1:46
  I felt honored and privileged to have been
• 1:49
  asked to take this role in,
• 1:52
  just about,
• 1:53
  just over a year in now.
• 1:55
  Matt, having worked all across the country,
• 1:58
  are there certain
• 1:59
  threads that you've learned or picked up as
• 2:02
  far as the children's hospital
• 2:04
  administration is concerned or any aspects that you
• 2:07
  think have stood out in your in your
• 2:09
  work travels, let's say?
• 2:11
  Yeah. That's a really good question, Chris. You
• 2:14
  you know, 1 thing I've noticed
• 2:16
  working,
• 2:18
  across the country is that health care truly
• 2:20
  is
• 2:22
  local.
• 2:23
  And the children's hospital,
• 2:24
  almost always by definition,
• 2:26
  is a safety net hospital.
• 2:29
  And they take care of all the children
• 2:31
  in the community,
• 2:33
  so regardless of their ability to pay.
• 2:35
  And often
• 2:37
  kids travel, you know, significant distances to receive
• 2:40
  care from a children's hospital.
• 2:42
  And so that mission component of what they
• 2:45
  do
• 2:46
  is a common thread
• 2:48
  throughout all children's hospitals.
• 2:50
  But the role they play in the community
• 2:52
  and the connection to the community,
• 2:55
  can differ from sort of 1 market to
• 2:57
  the next. And so
• 2:59
  it's it's so, it's fascinating, and it's so
• 3:02
  critically important when you're a hospital leader to
• 3:05
  really understand
• 3:08
  the community
• 3:09
  that you're you're serving and and what their
• 3:11
  priorities are and what their what their real
• 3:13
  needs are.
• 3:15
  Thank you for expounding upon that, Matt. And
• 3:17
  speaking of priorities, what are your top priorities
• 3:20
  today in the role that you're in right
• 3:21
  now?
• 3:24
  So our our priorities are to continue telling
• 3:26
  the
• 3:27
  the story of the good work that children's
• 3:30
  hospitals do.
• 3:32
  You know, I think it's easy to take
• 3:34
  for granted
• 3:35
  the fact that there's a children's hospital in
• 3:37
  in the community
• 3:39
  and not really understand
• 3:41
  what it is they do. And so children's
• 3:43
  hospitals take care of
• 3:46
  of,
• 3:47
  kids that are well,
• 3:49
  but they, more importantly, take care of kids
• 3:51
  that are really sick and have chronic complex
• 3:54
  conditions.
• 3:55
  And beyond that, they're also,
• 3:58
  hubs for innovation and research.
• 4:01
  There's a lot of,
• 4:03
  breakthrough treatments that have been
• 4:05
  pioneered at children's hospitals.
• 4:08
  In fact, when we think of cancer care
• 4:10
  today,
• 4:11
  and we we think about CAR T therapy,
• 4:14
  which is really the
• 4:16
  the cutting edge way to to treat cancer,
• 4:19
  I was working at the Children's Hospital of
• 4:21
  Philadelphia when we treated the very first patient,
• 4:25
  a young a young woman
• 4:27
  for relapse leukemia.
• 4:30
  And and so that's
• 4:32
  the important role that children's hospitals play. And
• 4:34
  so our priorities are to continue to message
• 4:37
  that
• 4:38
  and to message that with
• 4:40
  the public at large as well as with,
• 4:43
  the administration in Washington and Congress.
• 4:47
  Given all that you've just laid out, Matt,
• 4:49
  how do you anticipate your role is going
• 4:51
  to change and as well as the the
• 4:53
  role of your team? How is that all
• 4:54
  gonna evolve in the next eighteen months or
• 4:56
  so?
• 4:58
  Yeah.
• 4:59
  That's a great question, Chris. You know, I
• 5:00
  think as you know, we have a new
• 5:02
  administration,
• 5:04
  entering
• 5:05
  DC,
• 5:07
  and,
• 5:08
  many new members of Congress.
• 5:10
  And what's interesting about,
• 5:13
  the makeup of this Congress
• 5:15
  is the amount of turnover that's occurred.
• 5:18
  And so,
• 5:20
  we had a fair number of retirements in
• 5:23
  this, in this past election cycle,
• 5:25
  and it's really not the sheer number that
• 5:28
  turned over.
• 5:29
  But what is important is the number of
• 5:31
  members of Congress that turned over
• 5:33
  who were experienced in health care policy,
• 5:37
  that's significant. We lost a lot of,
• 5:40
  of knowledge in this past election through retirements.
• 5:44
  And so we're going to have to do
• 5:45
  a lot of education,
• 5:47
  over the next couple of years with the
• 5:49
  new members of Congress,
• 5:52
  as well as with the new members of
• 5:54
  the administration.
• 5:55
  And so we're gonna focus on topics like
• 5:57
  the workforce.
• 5:59
  We've we have a perennial issue
• 6:01
  with the workforce and children's hospitals,
• 6:05
  and that includes not just physicians
• 6:07
  in in many specialties, but also
• 6:11
  other types of caregivers like respiratory therapists,
• 6:15
  like radiology
• 6:16
  technicians,
• 6:17
  lab technicians.
• 6:18
  So we need to be talking about the
• 6:20
  workforce and how we can continue to invest
• 6:22
  in and support it.
• 6:24
  We need to continue to talk about the
• 6:26
  Medicaid program.
• 6:28
  Medicaid is the single largest pair of children's
• 6:30
  health care in this country.
• 6:32
  It usually covers
• 6:34
  fifty five to sixty percent of the patients
• 6:37
  walking through the doors of a children's hospital.
• 6:40
  And so how we how we continue to
• 6:43
  support that program so that it is sustainable,
• 6:47
  over the long term is incredibly important.
• 6:50
  And then, of course, we still have the
• 6:52
  issues with the, youth mental health crisis.
• 6:56
  And so we're gonna continue to talk to
• 6:59
  congress administration about those things that we can
• 7:01
  do,
• 7:02
  to,
• 7:03
  continue to mitigate that crisis and to really
• 7:06
  focus on the well-being of children.
• 7:10
  Certainly a long list of priorities that you
• 7:12
  have there, Matt, but, obviously, everyone is
• 7:15
  very much important.
• 7:17
  Switching gears slightly
• 7:19
  here on the interview, I simply wanna ask
• 7:21
  you it's a 2 part question. So what
• 7:23
  makes you nervous right now? I understand it
• 7:25
  could be a long list, and that's okay.
• 7:27
  And,
• 7:28
  just as importantly, though, what aspect or aspects
• 7:31
  of health care are exciting you right now?
• 7:34
  So that's a,
• 7:37
  that's a good question that there's a lot
• 7:39
  in there. So what makes me nervous? I
• 7:42
  I don't know if it makes me nervous,
• 7:43
  but it just it it,
• 7:45
  you know, it spurs a lot of energy
• 7:47
  in me, the fact that we do have
• 7:49
  this new administration
• 7:51
  and
• 7:52
  a very different,
• 7:54
  makeup in congress.
• 7:56
  And so
• 7:57
  I just know that we're gonna have to
• 7:59
  do a lot of work educating
• 8:01
  about the policies that impact children's hospitals,
• 8:05
  how children's hospitals are different, that children are
• 8:08
  not little adults,
• 8:10
  that we have
• 8:11
  unique needs from a regulatory
• 8:14
  framework and and from a,
• 8:16
  reimbursement framework for for kids' hospitals. And so
• 8:19
  it it makes me a little bit nervous
• 8:21
  that we have to do as much education
• 8:23
  as we do.
• 8:25
  But at the same time, that's an opportunity.
• 8:27
  It's an opportunity to really level set
• 8:30
  and to
• 8:31
  really advance
• 8:33
  our priorities.
• 8:34
  So I kinda look at it both ways.
• 8:35
  Like, it makes me nervous,
• 8:37
  but it's an opportunity.
• 8:39
  And,
• 8:41
  and so that's that.
• 8:42
  And then I think to the second part
• 8:45
  of your question, which is,
• 8:47
  you know,
• 8:48
  what's coming down the road.
• 8:50
  You know, we've really made some significant advances
• 8:53
  in in children's health care on the research
• 8:56
  and innovation side.
• 8:58
  And I really feel like we're,
• 9:01
  making great progress in treating,
• 9:05
  conditions and diseases that,
• 9:07
  you know, not that long ago were,
• 9:10
  unfortunately,
• 9:12
  not treatable
• 9:13
  and really resulted in in death.
• 9:16
  And so we've made such significant progress that
• 9:19
  I really feel like the next few years,
• 9:21
  we're gonna
• 9:22
  see even more progress made.
• 9:24
  And that just means we're going to be
• 9:27
  able to give parents,
• 9:29
  good news and hope,
• 9:31
  and,
• 9:32
  you know, invest,
• 9:34
  investing in children is really,
• 9:37
  the most
• 9:39
  significant thing we can do for this country.
• 9:41
  And so I'm just really excited about where
• 9:43
  we stand in terms of, clinical advancements.
• 9:47
  The hope you hit on there, Matt, is
• 9:49
  certainly very important. I mean, obviously, it's it's
• 9:52
  heartwarming anytime you can go to a parent
• 9:54
  or a family and say, you know, we
• 9:56
  have good news for you. Well, Matt, we
• 9:58
  thank you so much for being so generous
• 10:01
  with all of your time and your insights
• 10:02
  today. We cannot wait to share them with
• 10:04
  the audience in the near future, and we
• 10:05
  look forward to connecting with you soon.
• 10:08
  Thanks, Chris. Really appreciate it. Have a great
• 10:10
  day.