This is Chris Sosa with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
I'm thrilled to be joined by doctor Trey
Eubanks,
president and surgeon in chief of Le Bonheur
Children's Hospital in Memphis and professor of surgery
and pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health
Sciences Center. Doctor Eubanks, thank you for joining
us today. Thank you. Thanks for having me
on the program. Doctor Eubanks, for those who
are not familiar with you and or your
work, could you please introduce yourself and tell
us a bit about your background?
Sure. My name is Trey Eubanks. I'm a
pediatric surgeon, by training
from
a little town in North Mississippi called Tunica,
only about an hour from here. I went
to medical school at the University of Mississippi.
I did general surgery training at the University
of Tennessee and then pediatric surgery training at,
University of Texas Southwestern
at, Dallas Children's Hospital.
And so, I've been in practice here, in
Memphis my entire career.
I came back here in 2002,
really
because I wanted to work at this children's
hospital because of really what I saw as
a resident
working here
when I was, in my training for general
surgery.
There was something special about the people here,
something special about the mission that they did.
And,
so I was very excited to be joining
a couple of people that were my mentors,
when I was a general surgery resident. So
I came back to Memphis
and, started practice here in 2002, and I've
been in practice here
ever since. You know, Le Bonheur Children's Hospital
is, in Memphis, Tennessee, but we have outreach
clinics,
in 3 locations,
within about 90 miles
of our downtown primary location.
And we have 45 pediatric specialties
and about 250,
pediatric providers. We have got a very
robust
community outreach,
group. We do,
very
deep dive into pediatric research, and we have
our own pediatric research institute that's growing,
leaps and bounds. Our downtown hospital is is
290
beds now, and then we have a 21
bed
unit, which is in,
one of our,
communities,
nearby Jackson,
Tennessee,
Jackson Madison County General Hospital.
We're also the primary teaching,
facility for all pediatric
trainees in the state of Tennessee,
for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center,
and we, train more than 350 pediatricians,
specialists every year.
And, for the 14th year in a row
this year, we were ranked as one of
the top children's hospital by US News and
World Report.
Also, we're a magnet,
designated facility.
All those great accolades are nice and gives
you some,
information about kind of the character, what
type of quality we provide. But the thing
that makes
Le Bonheur special to me is is the
mission to take care of every kid,
despite their stage in life and their ability,
to to seek care. We try to provide
access for all.
And,
when you meet the associates that work here,
we're all pulling together for the same thing.
We just do what's right for kids, and
that's,
that's kind of our anchor statement, so to
speak. So it's the kind of place I
want to work, in my whole life, and
I'm just
honored to be able to be here and
lead it as the president
now.
Thank you, doctor Eubanks. It's definitely wonderful to
familiarize our audience with all the things that
you and LaVona have been able to accomplish,
including
the ranking from US News and World Report.
Congratulations on that, certainly, and everything you guys
are working toward. And how great is that
that you're able to actually work at the
place that you focused on returning to. So
with that, doctor Eubanks,
just wanna ask you, what are your top
priorities today at La Bonnet?
Well, we just wanna provide the absolute best
care to the children that we are charged
to take care of and and to support
the families in that. You know, serving,
Memphis in the mid south,
we're 200 miles from the nearest,
similarly,
supported children's hospital.
And so, we've got a responsibility
to the patients we take care of to
provide the absolute best in in health care.
And and, you know, families don't like to
travel
as much for for care, as maybe they
used to. They wanna stay close to home,
and so we had to make sure that
we have got everything that they could get
just about anywhere else.
And so, that's that's really our biggest,
goal is to always provide the absolute best
care for kids,
when they cross our doors,
which means we've got to have ax
excellent, clinicians.
We've got a a well trained
associate staff of nurses and therapists, and we've
got to be open and ready to take
care of them at any time of the
day,
or night. So that that is our biggest
goal.
We continue
to educate
the caregivers of tomorrow,
today in our hospital,
and,
we always are seeking ways to
improve
on, cures and therapies and even devices that
can make
the care of of children,
even,
better with less,
side effects. And so we're trying to improve
health,
on the acute care side. And then and
then in the community,
we we try to get in the community
to address kids that are living in areas
or in situations in their life that may
put them at risk for diseases,
or for illnesses later in life, and we
try to intervene there as well, through our
community outreach,
efforts.
So it's it's a big task, but I
think it's, it's an honorable one, and we're
we're glad to have it.
That's certainly. And thankfully, you have
great people working with you as well, doctor
Eubanks.
I'm glad you mentioned
the evolving nature of medicines and treatments. I
mean, certainly health care is anything but static.
So looking ahead a little bit, how do
you anticipate your role is going to evolve
as well as the role of your teams
over the next 18 months or so?
Well, we fortunately have just,
moved into
our our newest expansion of over nearly a
130,000
square feet,
which expanded
primarily our cardiac care unit,
but also our neonatal intensive care unit
and, our recovery room area.
We also added,
Tennessee's first,
hybrid MRI cath lab space,
to be able to do more
cardiac catheterizations
in a hybrid fashion with MRI directing the
care.
And in that same area, we added virtual
reality lab to help our cardiac subspecialists,
be able to explore
through 3 d modeling
the best way to take care of some
of the patients with congenital heart disease. So
our biggest focus,
right now over the next 18 months
is,
is continuing to grow our staff in those
areas
and expand into those spaces and adding even
higher,
better technology,
in those areas to continue to help our
heart patients grow.
Really excited about our NICU expansion as well
because we had been
we have a 60 bed NICU, but, because
we're a children's hospital, we don't have a
birthing center. And so all of our babies
come in from outlying neonatal intensive care units,
and they're often pretty sick, very premature, or
have other, significant illnesses.
And,
we have been full, for the last several
years
at at nearly 60 patients,
on an average daily census of, you know,
58 to 60 every every day. So we
needed more space there. So we expanded that
space
up to 70,
4 beds. And then we have some other
space that if we needed to in the
future,
we could expand up to close to 90
90 beds.
So
staffing those areas and continue to grow into
those areas is kind of our biggest,
primary,
goal for the next,
6 to 12 months.
In addition,
MRI technology continues to improve, and we're adding
newer,
more innovative MRI
capabilities to our hospitals so that we can
do MRIs,
even quicker,
on our patients. In some cases, in less
than half the time that we're currently doing
MRIs. And as you know, probably,
children don't tolerate MRIs without sedation. And in
fact, a lot of adults don't tolerate MRIs
without sedation. But because of the because of
the sedation required for many of our children,
that requires a lot of anesthesia assets.
And so we're trying to actually recruit more
anesthesia providers that will help us
help us to do that
and and to support that space.
We're we're looking for ways to kinda grow
not just our kinda regional footprint,
but also our scholarly activity,
and grow our research,
capabilities. We we have
partnered with, in clinical care, St. Jude Children's
Research Hospital in helping provide the clinical care
for a lot of their patients. We're also
partnering with them in some research activities now
and really striving to increase,
some of our research funding,
that we've been able to get over the
last several years and and have already seen
some successes in that area.
So, you know, innovation is really the the
name of the game going forward. And so
looking for more innovative ways to provide better,
safer care for children
faster, more efficiently, but also at the same
time remembering we're supporting a whole family when
we do that, which has always been a
real centerpiece for what we do is patient
family centered care.
So one one of the one of the
cool features that we have, we're fortunate to
partner,
with one of our, local benefactors here, FedEx,
to build a a FedEx,
family house, which is a house just for
our patients and their families
to stay in, when they're here, and it
it is, it's a pretty full place. And
so it's a great place. The the families
love it when they come,
and it gives them a totally different feel,
for when you're in a hospital. We love
it when we can distract the families
from from the trauma or the anxiety of
what they're going through
with other activities,
be it a a place to say stay
like the FedEx Family House or activities
in the hospital.
So, finding more unique ways to do that
is important. Our FedEx Family House, and FedEx
is our partner, is so important to allowing
us to do that for our families, get
them a little bit of an escape,
from the hospital, so to speak. And and
it it's almost like being in a really
nice hotel.
But,
there are other children that come with them
oftentimes,
get to stay there, and the rest of
the family gets to stay there together and
maintain the family unit. So we think that's
all critically important, and we may be needing
more space in that area. So,
another thing that's that's on my mind for
the future. We have recently
lastly, we've recently recruited some new leaders,
physician,
leaders in our institution. One's our our newest
cardiac
surgery chief, who's just joined us and just
getting started. I have another cardiac surgeon coming
soon.
We have made some other leadership changes, which
I'm really excited about, but,
that are gonna allow us to grow,
with with kinda younger leaders,
and maybe have a little bit different
viewpoint of of of the direction that pediatric
care is going in. So all excited stuff,
all the all while we're training, the next
generation of leaders. So it's important things that
we do here.
Always exciting to be growing, doctor Eubanks. It
sounds like you and your team have with
your hands full and not necessarily a bad
way. It sounds like you've got a pretty
good handle on how things need to evolve
in your health system there, which is wonderful
to hear.
The next thing I wanna ask you, doctor
Eubanks, so
at this point in time, what's making you
a little bit nervous as far as health
care is concerned? And the other side of
that coin is what are you excited about?
Well, you know, things that have impacted
health care since since COVID have have really
been kinda universal. All health health systems have
dealt with some of the challenges in staffing,
some of the economics of of inflation that
impact
all parts of health care just like they
impact you when you go to the grocery
store. They've impacted us as well. And so
we're adjusting for that, but we you know,
some of the really exciting things that that
we have, I've kinda touched on a little
bit. We got some really cool research projects
going on in the area
of of, pediatric,
genetic epilepsy and some of the treatments that
we have, not just
therapeutics,
but also
surgical
innovations that have been
pioneered,
and we have adopted those and are starting
to use those to cure some of the
most crippling patients
with epilepsy.
Really, really proud of the work that that
team has done
in tackling what can be a really devastating
disease.
We continue to partner with
with our physicians throughout the region. You know,
because we're a comprehensive children's
hospital,
for the state of Tennessee, we have an
obligation not just to train our own staff
how to take care of patients,
but but we want the community hospitals that
are out in the more rural areas that
we serve
to be able to take care of patients
well there and get them to us
as quickly as possible. So we partner with
our regional,
hospitals and physician colleagues,
to educate them on what we would like
to see, how patients are cared for, how
to get them here to us quickly. And
if that partnership includes,
providing,
more care in those areas, then we do
that, like like I mentioned, in West Tennessee.
And so that's a it's exciting thing that
we're
developing those partnerships with those, regional partners of
ours,
in a way that we think are gonna
provide better care for the patients that they
serve,
and it's kind of our way of giving
back to those areas.
Another thing that is really
kinda cool that's been going on over the
last decade
is we have developed a bowel repository
of pediatric
of our pediatric population,
and one of the most diverse bowel repositories
in the country,
that allows for people to look at patients
from a more diverse population
and see what genetic,
conditions may be identified. And so some research
projects are going on,
with some of those, with with that bio
repository and partnering with not just, our local
physicians, but many,
children's hospital across the country to try trying
to get at some of those more unique
illnesses
that may tend to, impact,
populations that we see more of here in
in in this area, in particularly the African
American population.
And so, really excited about, some of the
impact we can make there. And then and
then lastly, our our community outreach, I just
can't say enough about the great work that
they do,
the many projects they have going on trying
to reach out to our communities that are
less
advantaged
and have,
restricted
access to care. We're just trying to open
up doors so we can get those patients
in
and and maybe curb some of the illnesses
that they're seeing
by by early intervention. So, you know, a
lot of great work and and more to
come, I hope.
Indeed. And best of luck with all those
worthwhile efforts, doctor Eubanks. And lastly, what I
wanna ask you is what issue in health
care do you think merits a brighter spotlight
than it's getting at the moment?
Well, I I probably would have to start
with with mental health.
It's it's
mental health has always been an issue. It's
not one that children's hospitals have dealt with
very,
efficiently.
And,
in fact,
we have been poorly staffed and prepared for
those patients. But with
some of the,
cultural changes with COVID
that we saw and and and the impact
that had on children,
and their and their mental well-being,
those patients,
all of a sudden kind of spring on
us. And so, here in the state of
Tennessee,
our children's hospitals across the state,
have partnered together,
to work with the,
state legislature
to try and drive at at some areas
that we can make an early impact because
despite the fact that these children sometimes wind
up in long care
inpatient facilities,
they often show up in our emergency departments.
And in the past, we really didn't
handle that as well as we could have.
And so now we have concerted effort,
backed up by the state of Tennessee, with
funding support to help initiate
some of the diagnosing
and therapeutic
interventions that we can do in these children,
when they come up to when they show
up in our emergency room to take better
care of them and also providing them safe
spaces
so that when they're here, they're in they're
in an area where they're they can't do
them harm harm to themselves or others, which
is another thing that that really really we
were not pull we were fully designed to
do. But now with the state support, we're
able to do that.
But not not only that, also to to
screen these kids
when they're not maybe showing up an extremist
or or in kind of a crisis situation
so that we can pick up some trends
that may actually
be identified and and get them to treatment
earlier before they even get to the emergency
department.
So what I'm talking about is is screenings
that are going on in all of our
clinics that we've just initiated
that'll help pick up,
some trends that may cue us to to
what really is going on with the patient,
which may actually be an anxiety issue or
some other mental health issue
that is presenting itself as actually a physical
ailment.
And,
you can probably imagine how,
it would it would benefit a a clinician
who may not be very equipped, at like,
for for example, a pediatrician
who may not be very equipped or the
most equipped to identify
issues of mental health, if we could screen
them using a psychologist before they get in
that
examination room
and identify issues that may that, you know,
the stomach pain may actually be something totally
unrelated
to the intestinal tract. It may actually be
more,
a neuropathic,
problem, a mental health issue that,
that other treatments are gonna benefit,
that some of the more traditional treatments that
pediatrician would prescribe would would have no impact
on. So, a lot of, I think, a
lot of areas of opportunity,
to address mental health in children,
but not just not just after they have
problems, but also before they get to be
problems. And and maybe even looking at ways
to prevent some of these mental health issues,
some things that we environmentally,
could do differently. And so hopefully hopefully, some
research will come out,
of these efforts to to
curb this, increase in mental health in children
that we're seeing.
I think I think secondly,
as children's hospitals, we need to continue to
partner,
with with each other,
as as I've mentioned across the state,
as the Children's Hospital
Alliance of Tennessee, also known as CHAT, c
h a t, has done,
in areas of mental health and other areas
to improve,
the health and wellness of children in our
state, but also locally,
with local county officials,
with local schools.
Not not as as someone coming in and
saying this is how you do it, but
as a partner,
to help improve,
the lives of children
in areas where they commonly are are seen
in our communities
and like in schools in particular.
We've had some,
success here, in Memphis partnering with our local,
municipality
and and some schools as well. And so
I think that's that's something that all children's
hospitals are gonna have to look to do,
kinda pull more into their community. And and
I guess
I guess lastly, I would say that,
continue to focus on the on the importance
of being family and, patient family centered in
the care that we provide.
You know, if I get sick today and
have to go to the hospital,
you know, my sisters,
may get there eventually, but they're not gonna
come with with my parents. My parents will
not be there.
My sisters may get there eventually. But when
I take care of a kid in my
hospital,
I'm gonna have,
their siblings. I'm gonna have their parents. I
may have their grandparents. I may have aunts
and uncles. I may have 20 people in
my hospital
over 1, sick child, which is which is
not which is not something,
I I I turn away from. I have
to embrace that,
because I know that the kid's gonna get
better,
quicker,
if we have the entire family engaged in
the care. And at the same time, there
may be issues with the family that I
need to address to help that kid,
have a have a safe and happy life.
So,
partnering with the family and and how the
care is provided
is is
is such an important part of what we
do, and it needs to continue to be
a focus
of what our children's hospitals do. So I
I think those are the areas that I
think are are are so important that we
need to focus on. Innovation is
is obviously kind of an evolving tool that
we're gonna be able to use.
And if you think about
any type of the computer models that are
allowing people to see better into what's going
on in the patient's care while they're in
the hospital.
And I can think of some, but I
won't necessarily name them,
that allow us to see a sick child
before they're actually
recognized as sick. For example, by maybe a
nurse that's not as as seasoned as mature,
as some nurses would be,
to allow us to identify sick patients earlier
and and intervene on those patients
using AI and those types of
innovative
software programs
going forward.
I think we have to have our eyes
wide open
in how that is used in our hospitals
and embracing it where we can and then
being curious,
always remaining a little cautious
as well about, how we apply those in
in health care, making sure we're protecting our
patients. So those are the things I think
that that need the the most spotlight going
forward.
Doctor Umang, thank you so much for being
so generous with your time or insights and
highlighting all the aspects of children's health care
that need a spotlight and, you know, things
that all of
you and your colleagues are dealing with on
a daily basis. We absolutely cannot wait to
share all of what you said with our
audience, and we look forward to connecting with
you again soon.
Thank you so much, and thank you for
having me. I appreciate it.