The most important health care decisions don't happen
in isolation.
They happen when leaders come together.
Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings together more than
3,500
hospital and health system executives this April in
Chicago.
With 800 speakers from Ascension,
Cleveland Clinic, CommonSpirit and more, the conversations get
real. Leaders will share how their scenario planning
for policy shifts, breaking through value based care
barriers, and building clinical teams that translate new
ideas into real world care.
Join top decision makers in the room April
13 through the sixteenth.
For the agenda and event details, visit beckers
hospital review dot com and click on the
events tab in the upper right.
This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Gina Cronin, executive vice president and chief people
officer at Children's National Hospital. Gina, it's a
pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
Thank you so much, Lauren. Very pleased to
be with you here today and with Becker.
Absolutely. Now I'm excited for our conversation because
I know there's so much happening in health
care, particularly at Children's National. You do some
amazing things. But before we dig in, can
you tell us a little bit more about
yourself and the organization?
Oh, absolutely.
I serve as chief people officer here at
Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC,
and we are one of the few independent
freestanding children hospitals in The US. It's a
pretty special place to work,
and we're very honored and and humbled to
be recognized as a top 10 children's hospital
in The US.
Our history is really, really long and interesting.
We have over a hundred
fifty five years. We
actually started and opened our doors in 1870,
serving orphaned children in the civil war. So
if you can imagine that.
We're the only hospital actually that's headquartered in
Washington, DC,
and we care for kids and families across
the District Of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and our
primary service area, but also the rest of
The United States
and many, many children across the globe.
Well, mission is is focused on outstanding
clinical care, really subspecialized
care,
innovation,
as well as we serve the community pediatric
care needs of the kids within our area.
For myself personally, I'm, I've joined Children's National
about a year and a half ago,
and I'm pretty unique, I think, as a
chief people officer in that I spent half
of my career really in clinical operations.
So I feel like I can bring that
clinical operations lens
into the work that we do within HR
to support our workforce, to support our teams,
to support our leaders, having kind of that
acumen.
And it's been a really wonderful and invigorating,
past year and a half year.
That's amazing to hear. You know, truly, outstanding
to have that opportunity,
you know, on the clinical side and clinical
operations
and then figuring out how, you know, you
can bring,
your specialization for the workforce too and and
the chief people officer role, it all ties
together so wonderfully.
When you think about the last year, year
and a half or so, could you tell
us about an initiative that you led? What
did you do, and what were the results?
Yeah. You know, when I joined, I also
joined a relatively new CEO.
And,
task one was really to get Children's National
ready to deliver on a new five year
strategy that was approved by our board, and
we were charged and are charged with really
delivering on some ambitious goals
around providing care,
preeminent
research,
pediatric
education,
our patient access and patient experience,
big focus on the communities that we serve,
and, of course, a pillar of all that
is our people. That was an important part
of the strategy.
So as a new chief people officer with
a, relatively new CEO and tenure,
My role as chief people officer is really
to charge and ready our organization to deliver
on that over the past recent year.
So the focus we had was really from
from a people lens on a few things.
The first, it was really important for us
to get leader alignment. So as we had
the strategy,
how did we get all all of our
leaders aligned to the strategy
for them to understand their role in delivering
that, inspired around that change,
to be clear eyed about the headwinds and
challenges we have, but also to be optimistic
and know that we have the capability
and the skills,
to deliver and inspire that. So we spent
a lot of time around leader alignment within
that, convened leaders together with our CEO and
and board chair with each other.
A second part of that was the organization
design. Right? So how we really wanted to
look at how we were structured to deliver
on the strategic goals
and what did we need to do to
adjust.
Did we need to adjust to be contemporary
children's hospital? So we looked across the organization
at
how we were organized, our our roles within
the clinical
operation space,
research, administrative. What are those structures,
that are needed? How did we need to
look at our decision making in order to
support that?
So that was a it was definitely a
big focus we had.
We also developed our leaders. So when we're
looking at how we deliver on that strategy,
how do we really invest intentionally invest in
our leaders to prepare them to lead?
So with a phased approach, we we started
with our executive team. We started with our
directors and above,
and then we've really rolled it out to
all supervisors and managers
with a focus on getting that common leader
culture. What are we all about as a
leadership team? What is our mindset?
Equipping our leaders with a common set of
frameworks and tools in order to, have the
abilities to do that,
and really walking the walk of this. Right?
So we wanted it to be embedded everywhere.
So we're now in progress actually
in developing a series of listening sessions because
we want to really curate what are our
expected set of leader behaviors that we can
use across the organization
to develop our leaders, to select,
to measure performance again. So so that's kind
of what the space we've been looking in
around leader develop.
And then finally,
change management. Right? So knowing that we've got
org design and we've got this this five
year strategy ahead, how do we equip equip
our leaders
with the ability to lead through that change
to support them with being able to frame
to their teams the why. Right? Why are
we doing this? And having those tools to
to get their teams,
to the other side of it.
So that's what what we've been focused on
on the past year. It's been amazing work,
but it it's been really invigorating
to to watch everyone lean in together into
it.
I love that. I think it's so critical
to have that type of executive alignment and
making sure you've got everything in place. So
then, you know, as you're developing
what what your strategic plan is going to
be and then listening to,
your teams in the front lines as well,
it just really makes a big difference, to
have all folks have influence over it quite
frankly and then being able to move forward.
And I like what you just said too
about framing the why and and making sure
you have, the tools for your team to
get there.
I'm curious, you know, when you look into
the next year or so, what are some
of your priorities and headwinds that you're focused
on as you're continuing to go through this,
process in 2026?
Right.
Well, headwinds, I think that's another word for
opportunities. Right? How do how do we frame
that, so that knowing that we have the
ability to tackle them? I think as we
look into 2026,
a big focus from us, from a people
perspective is is really creating strategic workforce capabilities.
And,
what we're particularly facing, we've got three big
transformations underway. We are really seeking
to enhance the experience of of our children
and families across all of our ambulatory services
so that they
have a very standard and outstanding
experience across any location or or facility where
they're receiving care.
We also are,
implementing Workday, a new ERP,
and we're also launching an implementation of Epic,
a new EHR.
So we've got three big transformations,
and we know that those are gonna really
fundamentally
change the way that our team members work.
So we're looking to build a capability
at Children's National within HR that we can
strategically look at our workforce. So we can
have the ability
to look across jobs,
capture, you know, potential business cases around standardization,
modernization,
look at workforce redesign,
readiness,
and really take jobs and deconstruct them, look
at a task level,
and perhaps create new jobs that haven't existed
before,
allow our team members to operate at the
top of their license,
as we're creating these new workflows.
So that's what our focus is gonna be.
We wanna be proactive and not be reactive.
And, you know, everyone is really talking about
what the implications
to the workforce will be around
AI. And,
we think if we can start looking at
work force
design around these big areas, ambulatory redesign,
epic redesign,
that will have that good strong capability
to handle any type of disruption
that AI may have for some of our
workforce.
The the other
big opportunity
that we are focused on is really looking
at well-being
at Children's National, and we made a very
intentional effort to create that as a strategic
imperative for our workforce.
And we are taking in all kinds of
data points around that and and looking what
are the opportunities
to substantially
impact well-being,
across the organization, whether that is around
financial well-being,
mental health well-being,
structural well-being. Right? How do we make sure
that our systems and processes
work pretty frictionless across the organization
to make the everyday
lives of our clinicians better?
So we're really looking at a lens of
doing that, and that work,
is really we're we're supporting it from HR,
but it's partnering very deeply with our with
with everyone across the organization from nurses to
physician leaders,
operational leaders, and more. So those are really
the two big focus focus areas we have
ahead around strategic workforce design and well-being.
I love that. And, you know, it's, both
aspects are so critical. And I know especially
today when you think about bringing AI into
the health care organization operations and, you know,
anything along those lines, there there's always gonna
be a little bit of challenge or or
fear of the unknown. But it sounds like
being able to have the right message to
your teams and, understanding that redesign and and
caring for them and and how they're,
fulfilled within their roles, it it makes a
big difference.
And and I'm curious. Can you share with
us? Yeah, anything, you know, one bit deeper
about kind of some of that transition and
how you're making sure you're prepared for that.
And I know there'll just be more AI
and more opportunities,
for for things to come into the organization.
So how do you create, like, that nimble
and and resiliencies?
You you know, you're,
moving quickly, I I think, especially, right now
when technology evolves so quickly.
Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's why we wanna
start working on it today. Right? And so
what we do know is changing
is, we do have this this imperative to,
really make ambulatory experience first rate. So how
do we look at the jobs that are
being done today
and, have that standardization
create, you know, less friction within that. And
we've got these two big technologies coming in.
So we feel like if we can get
our feet wet in these current changes and
get really pretty nimble and agile
on how to change those roles for the
future,
that we should be able to have that
resiliency,
that capability,
that when when an AI change,
impacts us, we'll have the toolkit to know
how to approach it. So that's why we're
we're hoping to lean into it and not
kind of be back in our heels and
reacting to it.
I love that. That makes a lot of
sense. Now,
I'm curious too when you think about the
next year, what is the hardest thing that
you're gonna have to do? I know, you
know, even,
having growth initiatives in in some of the
opportunities that you've talked about, that are really
exciting but don't always come easy when you're
trying to do something organization wide. So I'm
curious. How are you thinking about those types
of things?
Yeah. Well, it's it's pretty daunting even the
the few imperatives I put out for you
for the upcoming year. So I think we're
really gonna be keeping a pulse
on our organization,
our team members, our leaders
to make sure that they are,
not getting fatigued with all the change.
So change is super exciting, especially the the
change that we have coming in that we
know are going to allow them to care,
for patients in in much more contemporary fashion.
But when you have too much change, right,
you have to be worried about how much
how much, the organization can take in without
it becoming a bit overwhelming. So we're really
trying to keep a close pulse on that,
to make sure that there's not a fatigue.
And what do we need to pause? Right?
So if we are getting to that point,
are there priorities that we need to just
kind of put on pause for a while
until we get through some of these major
transformations?
That makes a lot of sense. And, you
know, it's definitely hard sometimes to hit that
pause button or to go a little bit
slower, but making that strategic decisions and focus
areas, I know is critical.
And when you think about, you know, that
potential for fatigue or the pause button, what
types of things, you know, kind of typically
fall into that bucket, or do you anticipate
falling into that bucket over the next couple
years?
You know, Tara, I think I think it's
gonna be hard to to know what we're
gonna need to pause on. There's certain things
that we know we've we've gotta deliver. Right?
So we are gonna be implementing
a transformational
ERP across the organization. We are bringing epic.
We are we are committed to the things
within our strategic plan. So I think it's
gonna have to be we're gonna have that
muscle and to build in that
that routine schedule where we're revisiting priorities,
and we're creating criteria about what is most
important for us to take care of children
and what really drops down low on the
priority. So, you know, we're everyone is super
ambitious and and wants to do everything
everywhere.
But there are points where we're just gonna
have to say, this one's gonna have to
wait. So I I think it's gonna really
be a team effort with us really
re being almost ruthless about prioritization
around what needs to happen and what's most
important for caring for kids.
That's helpful to understand. And even, you know,
just how you're thinking about that decision making
processes,
makes a lot of sense. Now before we
wrap up here, where do you see some
of the best opportunities for organizational growth?
Well, again, we have this incredibly special mission
of of caring for our most precious, our
most vulnerable patients with our children.
So for us,
we really view it as, an organizational
mission to continue
to
grow the care that we can provide.
So highly differentiated,
complex, clear. How do we deliver that to
more kids and families?
So for us, how do we bring that
world class pediatric care to more communities, more
neighborhoods?
That's really gonna be where our focus is,
and which is really centered around our victim.
Got it. That makes a lot of sense.
You know, it's a great way to think
about how you can grow and and serve
your patient population.
Thank you so much, Gina, for joining the
podcast today. This has been so much fun
to kinda learn from you and,
getting your perspective on everything that's going on
in health care at Children's National. And, you
know, I look forward to catching up with
you as well at our annual meeting. I
know you'll be speaking on a panel with
us, and we talk touching on many of
these things too. So I look forward to
seeing you there.
Thank you so much, Laura. It's great to
chat with you, and, I'm excited to, meet
everyone in April as well.