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- Welcome everyone,
to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Mariah Mohammed Ry
and moderator with Becker's Healthcare.
I'm absolutely thrilled to have with me today,
Dr. Day Chung, president and CMO at Children's Health
and UT Southwestern Joint Pediatric Enterprise.
Doctor, it's very nice
to have you on the podcast today. How are you
- Doing Great. Uh, thanks for having me.
- Yeah, of course. Very excited to talk with you today.
Uh, and to get us started,
would you mind please introducing yourself
and telling us a bit about your background?
- Yes, I'd be happy to.
Um, I'm a passionate, uh, academic pediatric surgeon,
so I brought on little babies and children
and a physician executive in Dallas, Texas, uh,
with more than 25 years of clinical
and leadership experience.
So my role currently I am, um, serving as the President
and Chief Medical Officer for Children's Health
and UT Southwestern's Joint Pediatric Enterprise.
We affectionately prefer to as JPE, uh, around here.
And I just, uh, completed serving as a surgeon
and chief at Children's Medical Center at Dallas
and Plano Campus for several years.
And, uh, and I remain as the, uh, uh, academic, uh, uh,
professor of surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
So through the JPE as I mentioned, we have
combined our respective expertise to collaborate and,
and advance our pediatric patient care research teaching
and certainly community outreach.
And, and our goal is to really transform the lives
of our region's children's for the better.
So my current role, I'm responsible for
strengthening our clinical operations
and fostering a stronger partnership across the JPE
and throughout the, uh, certainly, uh, uh, region and at DFW
and North Texas communities.
So I work closely with leaders at the Children's Health
and UT Southwestern Medical Group practice to develop
and execute strategies to
operationalizing across all spectrum of pediatric, uh,
practices and service lines with the, really the goal always
to improve the overall patient care, being mindful of
cost and highly being efficient
and deliver the, you know, easy access for patients
and our, one of the fastest, if not the fastest,
rapidly growing North Texas pediatric population.
And lastly, I'm a, uh, native Texan who went
to high school here some like years ago.
And, uh, I'm proud to, uh, elevate care
for children in the region and help shape the next
generation pediatric surgeons.
So those are a few, uh, uh, sort
of points I wanted to share with you.
- Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing.
So with all your experience that you just talked about, um,
and what you're currently doing now,
can you tell me about your most successful project
or initiative from the last year?
Uh, what, what issues were you trying to solve
and also what drove the success?
- Yeah, no, happy to share.
I'd say I think that one of the several things,
obviously major initiative,
but one thing that we've really put a lot
of emphasis in the highlight is, uh,
recent innovation initiative that we've launched
to help lead our organization
to be ranked the best children's hospital in north Texas
by US News and World Report.
And with those ranking, uh, it,
it isn't about just getting ranked
and recognized it, it's really about having infrastructure
and resources and foundation, uh, key elements
and support to make sure we are delivering the best possible
care for all patient that we, uh, see.
And, and, and it does take a whole truly a team effort.
So for example, I mean our
significant efforts in pediatric mental health crisis
and that really just, we've done some great, great work
to serve the community
and so many kids in teenagers that are in great, uh,
need of our health.
So we recently released in our 2023 beyond a b,
c report from Children's Health and,
and, um, detailed the, the current state of mental health
of children in north Texas
and how we as an organization are, are doing about
and as well as what really as, uh, uh, as a community, uh,
in a medical community that we need to be doing far more.
So that's some of the couple examples that I wanted
to highlight.
And then lastly, we, we've got some great, uh, expansions,
uh, in our Plano campus,
which is about 20 miles north of Dallas campus.
There's, uh, if you were to drive
by in this neighborhood in Texas, I mean,
there are just cranes and building expansions
and near completion.
So we're excited to have a, um,
really a anticipated new tower opening in the fourth
quarter of 2024.
So lots of, lots of work underway in anticipation of, uh,
opening up so many more beds to serve the community
and needs in northern market as well as Plano.
And then we last year launched a, uh,
multi-specialty ambulatory clinic and Prosper Texas.
So that again, to go
and be closer to families home to deliver highly
specialized expertise and, uh, care.
Uh, it's been a great, great, uh,
um, offering to the community.
So we're really proud of that.
Um, so there was a couple examples of, uh,
a couple successful projects that we have come undertaken
and come to, uh, see to fruition last year.
- Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much
for giving us that insight.
Definitely sounds like you
and the organization has been busy for this year.
Um, the clinical workforce has changed a lot in the last few
years as I know you are aware of.
What challenges are you still facing
and how do you see the clinical workforce evolving?
- Yeah, I think pandemic, uh, has changed lots
of stuff across all enterprises
and hospital across the country.
There's several, um, variables and compounding factors,
but I think one of those most important areas
that we put a lot of focus and emphasis
and resources to burnout and wellness are care providers.
It is really important is equally as we're taking care
of more complex and complicated
and sicker patients, we have to make sure
that our team members are healthy
and we have resources to support
with all very difficult work they're doing day in,
day out, frontline.
So Children's Health as an employee
of choice has taken a number of steps to support our staff
employees positions, uh, overall wellbeing
through a comprehensive benefits program
and nurturing the environment and supporting our goals
and empowering them to reach full potential, both work
as well as in basically outside personal lives as well.
I mean, we, we've done really some incredibly innovative
and, uh, a resource enrich, um, offerings
to supporting our staff work-life balance is
so, so important.
Healthcare delivering healthcare has changed
substantially since the covid.
And so we, we wanna make sure that we, we go far and above
and beyond to make, take care of our team members.
'cause without healthy minds
and healthy, um, approached by our team members, we,
we we're not in any, um, a good position to be able
to really take care of some
of the most complicated complex patients
that we're dealing with every day.
- Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing.
And Doctor, before I let you go, the last thing I wanted
to ask you is, do you have any advice
for aspiring physician nurse leaders?
- Oh, I have many, but I I'll share just a couple.
I think the key is communication and collaboration.
You have to engage at the end of day healthcare.
Delivering patient care is,
is all about team work and team effort.
So I say collaboration is the key to get the absolute best
and maximum result that really relies on various expertise,
uh, the team around myself or any members of the team.
And so that we all compliment each other.
So I think as a great leader
or a good leader, it is about recognizing
that it's all about your team members
that are really working together to deliver the care
in a very coordinated and organized and supportive fashion.
So I think that is really, really important, uh, advice
that I would have for aspiring physician
and or nursing leaders.
And with that is I just elaborated just stay healthy, uh,
healthy body, healthy mind.
I mean all that goes along.
I mean, I think that we have to really take care
of each other in order for us
to better take care of our patients.
So I would say that's the, that's the advice that I have
for aspiring physicians and nurse leaders.
- Wonderful. Well, thank you so much
for those spinal thoughts, doctor.
There's definitely been an amazing
and informative discussion today.
So I wanna thank you so much
for coming on Becker's Healthcare
and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- Thank you, Mariah. And thank you for having me.
- It's so important for leaders at the top of organizations
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