Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I'm Chris
Sosa, your host, and I'm thrilled to be
joined today by Jamie Wiggins. He's executive vice
president and chief operations officer of Arkansas Children's.
Jamie, thank you for joining us today. Thank
you, Chris. Happy to be here. Yeah. It's
such a pleasure. So, Jamie, for those in
our audience who maybe are not too familiar
with yourself and your organization, could you please
let us know a little bit about both?
Absolutely. I am a pediatric nurse by background.
I've been in pediatric health care for thirty
years.
Held some various levels of executive leadership before
joining Arkansas Children's four and a half years
ago. We're the only pediatric health care system
in the state completely dedicated to kids.
We have two hospitals, five clinics, a research
institute, and a foundation,
and serve nearly 1,000,000 kids, 21 and younger
across our state.
Fantastic. Thanks for letting us know what Arkansas
Children is about and the breadth and and
scope that you guys cover, which is quite
a bit,
down in Arkansas.
First question I have for you, Jamie, is
this. So let's look a little bit back
at 2025.
So what would you say is the most
important initiative that you and the organization led
last year, and can you tell us the
results
and how it evolved?
Sure.
I think we've been in the middle of
a multiyear campus expansion project or really system
expansion project across our different sites of care.
But from an operational standpoint, what we really
focused on last year was creating a very
seamless front door for patients and families.
We know that we have the tertiary, quaternary,
full complement of services that kids in our
region need, but it wasn't always as easy
to get a scheduled appointment.
And so we really focused on template
optimization with our provider colleagues.
We focused on our technology access points to
make sure that it was streamlined so that
we could schedule appointments.
And what that really allowed us to do
is last year, we saw nearly 200,000 unique
patients, which was our most patients seen in
a given year in our history. So some
really great work that's happened there.
Jamie, in looking at that project, what would
you say you learned about
either yourself,
or learn about yourself, or learn about,
just what it takes to drive such an
initiative?
Yeah. You know, it always takes a big,
aspirational goal to figure out how you wanna
achieve culture change, but the reality is I
think I've learned it what I've always known
and reinforced. It happens at the front line.
It happens on those interactions with our leaders
and our front line team members and our
physicians,
and really making sure that we understand
what are the barriers
that have been created,
not on purpose, well meaning intended people, but
yet as our systems continue to get complex,
as we continue to respond and make sure
that we meet all of the regulatory requirements
for the care that we provide,
we sometimes make our system very hard to
navigate.
And so really making sure that we're engaging
all levels of the organization and really listening
for the frontline to understand what we can
do to make their job easier so that
we can align our goals.
Makes total sense. Thanks, Jamie. So as we
take that knowledge and we look ahead into
2026, we're a little bit into the year,
but still a lot to go. So what
would you say are the biggest priorities that
Arkansas Children's has? Any headwinds that you foresee
and even tailwinds that you're hoping can boost
you guys?
Well, I'm certainly hoping the access work that
we did last year will continue to be
a tailwind to help us move us forward
as we look to make sure that we
can take care of more kids this year.
I think what we have in common with
other organizations across the country is the talent
pipeline,
specifically around our physicians and our providers.
We know that across the country,
less people are going into pediatric subspecialties,
and so always making sure that we are
creating the kind of academic environment and clinical
environment that physicians would wanna choose,
as well as growing our pipeline
for our technical roles as well.
From a culture piece, as we look forward,
we're really calling ourself to excellence to really
focus on
a friendliest hospital mindset.
So, really, how do we make sure that
we are creating exceptional
customer service and patient care along the entire
trajectory
regardless if you interact with us in our
acute care tertiary service
or you interact with us on a telemedicine
visit. We wanna make sure that we are,
exceeding expectations and always we give care,
which has really,
been a motivating force for us to really
look at what we're doing and figure out
how we can equip our team members,
with the ability and the skill set and
the flexibility to make sure they deliver on
those expectations.
And so, we're excited about what the future
holds.
It's fantastic.
Let's
look at
a a little bit more about 2026.
So you have funding that you wanna get
done. No doubt.
So when you think about that,
what do you think is the hardest thing
you'll have to do in the coming year?
It doesn't mean you're not looking forward to
doing it, but you understand it's gonna take
a specific
and intense level of focus to accomplish that
goal.
Yeah. The one thing I would say that
kinda highlight is our focus on rural health
care.
It's really hard to do that work.
Over 50% of the children that live in
Arkansas live in rural communities.
Nationally, that percentage is around 12.
And so we have a huge calling
to figure out how we can get in
those communities,
which will require infrastructure and resources
that doesn't always align with current payer methodologies.
So we really are leaning into
our commitment to improve child health across the
state, and that obviously isn't gonna happen in,
you know, one year. That's gonna be a
multiyear focus that we continue to invest in,
but we're really excited about that work.
And for me, what I really am always
focused on is how do we deliver the
best care and the best environment
and make sure that we have
optimized the efficiency in the running of our
organization.
If any dollar that I can help, say,
from the delivery of care provides a dollar
that we can invest in the future for
rural health care.
That's
a perfect equation, I would say.
Let's look at
looking forward, you mentioned
infrastructure,
but I do wanna ask you not only
about that, but other opportunities you see for
growth. I mean, certainly,
as you mentioned, caring for kids
in Arkansas where 50%
of them live in rural areas, that that's
gonna take investment. Right? So where do you
see Arkansas children going with that next? Whether
it's the next year,
eighteen months, five years, what whatever timeline you
think is appropriate in this time.
Sure. Well, we just kicked off this past
July our new five year strategic plan. And
so we've kinda given ourselves a five year
runway to figure out how we will continue
to make a deep dent in improving rural
health care.
Our chief strategy officer and our strategy leadership
team has really,
will probably focus on chronic illness.
How do we create hubs that will allow
us to focus on the chronically ill in
our state to help with health care management?
So for one example would be diabetes.
Is there a way that we can make
sure we stay in constant contact in monitoring
of our diabetic patients
to really achieve some population health management
at a statewide level. So I think that's
one of the areas that you'll see us
kinda focus over the next couple years.
I think we have a lot of interest
as a lot of health care systems do
across the country to understand what the investment
in rural health care across the country will
be.
I think we've got a couple of projects,
for consideration. So hopefully, we'll be able to
start accelerating some of that work.
Terrific, Jamie. Thanks, Drew, for highlighting all those
efforts that you guys are working on. I
did wanna give a chance to highlight yet
another, and that is your National Center for
Opioid Research and Clinical Effectiveness.
I understand that the construction began in August,
and you plan to open in 2027.
What would you say is the progress on
that project right now? What are you most
proud of?
Yeah. So the National Center for Opioid Research
and Clinical Effectiveness is actually one component of
our overall expansion project across our system,
where we're adding 330,000
square feet. We're gonna renovate another 170,000
square feet and really invest over $370,000,000
across our system.
The National Center for Opioid Research actually got
its funding,
the partnership with the attorney general for the
state of Arkansas.
$50,000,000
of opioid settlement money
was put towards this effort followed by another
$5,000,000
of JUUL settlement money.
So we did do a topping out ceremony
just a few weeks ago. We'll be looking
to open that up in the 2027,
and it really is setting a national infrastructure
for us to actually study and understand
not only opioid impact on child health, but
also,
mothers and babies. And so we're really excited
to have one building that will actually bring
in our research, our clinical enterprise,
and a research institute center under one building
so we can really start to understand, address,
and hopefully prevent,
substance use disorder and opioids.
Yeah. It's very impressive and certainly important that
there's a facility to
research all
the disparate and different elements that, you know,
go into treating and understanding,
opioid disorders.
Jamie, you've been such a pleasure to have
on as a guest.
We're gonna see you, I hope, very soon
here at the Becker's Conferences or or in
just in the podcast space, wherever that may
be. Thank you again for joining us. I'm
looking forward to it. I appreciate the opportunity
to connect with you. Anytime I talk about
Arkansas Children's, I'm happy to do so.