This is Chris with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dan Golans,
president of Texas Children's Pediatrics and Texas Children's Urgent Care. Dan,
thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me. Good morning.
Dan.
Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?
Sure. As you said, I'm Dan Go.
I'm president for of Texas Children's Pediatrics and Texas Children's Urgent
Care.
We have 80 plus locations across the central and southeast Texas regions,
so throughout Houston, Austin, and College Station.
I have been in the president role since 2021 and have been with Texas Children's
for over 10 years.
I have my undergraduate degree in master's degree from University of Central
Florida. I got into healthcare, uh, a little bit about why I,
how I got into this role. I got into healthcare thinking.
I actually wanted to be a physical therapist and quickly realized during my
undergraduate studies that, well, healthcare was where I wanted to be.
Patient care wasn't necessarily the thing I wanted to do.
And so quickly shifted my focus from the patient side to the business side of
healthcare. I've spent my entire career on the physician side,
so I have not worked, uh, in the hospital setting,
but I've spent all my time with physician groups,
either on the adult side or in now in the pediatric world.
Uh, Dan,
what was it that made you want to make that change from physical therapy to your
current path?
Well, I quickly realized in the anatomy and physiology classes that, uh,
looking at those very, very large textbooks,
that was not how my brain functioned to memorize, uh, information at a,
in a large quantity. I was more of a numbers person, data and analytics person.
Um, and in the background,
I had been taking a lot of the economics courses and finance courses.
So quickly shifted, uh,
shifted gears because I knew I wanted to do healthcare again,
thought I wanted to do patient care,
but recognized very quickly that that wasn't, wasn't for me,
but I could still have, uh, uh, the ability to impact patient care in a,
in a different way. And so utilized my, my finance and analytics skill set, um,
and, and went down that path.
Well, it certainly sounds like he lands here in the right place.
What would you say are your top priorities today?
Well, I'll gonna, I'll break that up into two, two buckets here. So,
from a patient standpoint, our, our,
our top priority is to continue to provide high quality best in class
experiences. Our families love us. They love their pediatricians.
Their pediatricians are a part of their daily lives. For some of our families,
they, you know,
they get to see your kids from the day that they're born until they leave,
leave for college. And we want our families, uh,
at least here in our organization, we want our families to,
to be a part of that.
And we want our pediatricians to be a part of our families. Um,
we have a responsibility to continue to make sure we have access for our
families. We have so many people that love us.
It's sometimes really hard to get in.
So we continue to look at different ways to provide access for our families. Um,
and that's where we're unique.
And our urgent care service line is very closely aligned with our primary care
service line.
So we have the ability for patients to get seen on a primary care side or on a
urgent care side, but we can see their entire history.
So while the provider might be different, the care is very seamless in,
in how we're providing it to our families.
From a physician and staff standpoint,
our prior priority coming out of the pandemic has really been around engagement
and wellness.
So what we heard from our team quite often was they felt abandoned or
alone, especially during the early parts of the pandemic,
because we didn't know what to expect. We didn't know, you know,
how to make sure everybody was truly protected. And while we had a ppe,
there's still a lot of questions out there. Uh, as we've come out of that,
we have really focused on the re-engagement and the wellness of our,
of our teams. Um, we are uniquely challenged due to our geographic spread.
So Texas is very large, and Houston is, um, has some,
some traffic barriers. And, and Austin is no different.
It can take you several hours to drive across town. Um,
but our geographic spread, while it is, uh, unique and challenging,
it is also provide us a unique opportunity to get out and,
and meet with our teams. So personally,
I make it an effort of mine to go out to our practices at least once or twice a
year to visit with our teams to listen. It's really important that we,
we go out and listen. We're not just there to shake hands and say hello.
We're there to listen and hear the direct feedback from our teams,
see what's going on in the clinic, hear from our patients,
or hear from our providers. Um, I have a very much have an open door policy.
Anybody has questions or concerns in our organization.
They can pick up the phone and call, they can email me. I am available. And,
and my leadership team, our directors, our executive team,
everybody has that same open access to them because we are very much here about
transparency, listening, communicating. Um,
I think the other thing that's really important to us is about two years ago,
we stood up our physician engagement and wellness committee as a physician
group. We are a physician-led organization,
and it's really important for us to be successful,
we have to have physician buy-in.
So we started this engagement and wellness committee really focused on combating
burnout. And we don't even like to say the word burnout.
We want to improve engagement and improve wellness. Um,
subsequently that's gone so well that we've done, uh,
subsequent groups for managers, advanced practice providers, staff,
and one specific to our urgent care setting,
just because there's some unique challenges that they have that might be
different on the, the primary care setting. Um,
but what I didn't talk about,
what you didn't hear me say was talk about finance or quality or, uh,
growth. You know,
we're confident that if we improve the engagement and the wellness of our staff
and our physicians, all the other stuff, the business stuff will come.
We will be successful in finance. We will have better quality outcomes. And,
and we've seen that. So we've seen our financial position improve.
We've seen our quality outcomes improve, um,
over time as we've continued to launch and, um,
navigate our way through the pandemic and, and really reengage with our,
with our staff and our physicians differently.
You mentioned the challenges that were faced by your teams during the pandemic.
Uh, with the recent wave of R S V,
what sort of feedback were you getting from your providers?
Yeah, that, that surge was over the,
the winter break was really heavy,
and I would tell you that outpaced any volumes that we
had seen during the, the pandemic, um, previously. But, you know,
everybody felt supported. They felt that we communicated appropriately.
Was it perfect? No. Were there times that we were like,
you just gotta figure out how we can get open, how we can see our families?
Absolutely. Um, but, you know,
I also think this was a unique challenge and nobody really knew what to do.
These were volumes and numbers across the, the country that patients weren't,
that we've never seen before. Um, I think as an organization,
having our urgent cares single-handedly saved our organization to be able to
function. Our emergency rooms were over capacity.
Our urgent cares were filled to the brim.
Our primary cares were filled to the brim.
And so we would leverage all those assets.
We leveraged our telemedicine program.
We were seeing 180 to 200 kids a night on telemedicine,
where normally we see a hundred. We were open till three o'clock in the morning.
So we, we pulled all the leverage that we could,
and our staff and our physicians felt very much supported. And, you know,
at some point we just said, this is as much as we can do,
and we're here to serve as many patients as we can, but we have to do it safely,
uh, for everybody.
Given all that you have seen, and it sometimes seems just overwhelming,
how do you anticipate your role and your teams will evolve over the next 18
months or so?
Yes, I think the word evolved is a, is a,
is a good term to use here. So Texas Children's, we have a very,
very strong history of growth and expansion, and we're really proud of,
of Texas Children's Pediatrics and urgent care. We've been around for 28 years,
so we've really, um, had a physician group that started,
started with one practice 28 years ago, and now with our urgent cares,
we're over 80. Uh, the next 18 months is gonna continue to be an evolution.
We have a new hospital that's opening up in Austin in February of 2024.
We've got additional urgent cares, additional primary care, uh,
service line offerings. So we need to continue to evolve and be flexible.
And what does it mean to provide care in not only just another part of
town, but a place that's three hours away? How do we support those practices,
support our physicians, support our families? Um,
Austin is a little different than Houston.
How do we support families differently there than we might here in Houston?
I think for my team,
we talk a lot about the evolution of our structure. So our finance,
our quality teams, our value-based care,
we know we need to evolve in those areas to continue to support the growth and
the expansion, um, that we have going on. And I think for me in particular,
I actually don't think there's a, a ton of evolution in my role.
My role continues to be an advocate. I need to advocate for my physicians.
We need to advocate for our staff, need to advocate for our leadership team,
need to provide them with those tools that they need to support and care for our
families. I can't do that. I cannot go in and serve our families.
I cannot go in and provide care for our families,
but what I can do is I could fight for whatever it is that they need.
I could advocate for those tools, those resources,
whatever it is that they need to do to be successful,
to be able to support our families. And I think in my role,
in our leadership team's role, like if we don't do that, then we are failing.
Uh, doesn't mean we can't evolve as leaders, but at the core of what we do,
we need to be an advocate for our, for our team. So I don't,
I don't see my role changing much in, in, uh, in that sense.
Uh, beyond advocacy, which is exer certainly very important. Uh,
what do you think is the key to cohesion among your network, considering,
as you said, it's spread all over Texas?
Yes, I think transparency and communication.
If there's one thing that we've learned throughout the pandemic,
you can't over communicate to your, to your, to your team.
So, uh,
what we've seen be the most success that we've had is our constant communication
around changes in protocols or updates around covid guidelines.
Um, going forward, it's, it's not necessarily covid, but what communication,
explaining the why, why are we doing something?
And it can't just be an email . Our doctors are staff. They're busy,
they're caring for patients. They're not sitting at their computer all day,
like we might be on the, on the business side.
So how do we communicate differently to them? Is it a quick phone call?
Is it a lunch and learn? Is it a night meeting? Um,
is it a quick text, uh, message that might go out to folks,
cell phones if it's something that's really, really important?
So we've learned a lot about communication,
how to communicate with our teams better, and in order for us to be successful,
that's gonna be even more key given our geographic spread, uh, that we have,
that we have today.
Uh, switching gears a little bit here, Dan,
what are you most excited about and what makes you nervous?
So, you know,
I'm most excited about the opportunities that we've had to build upon our
successes for the last 27 years. So we, again, have a strong,
strong core operations. We've been really successful,
but when you have a strong core, uh, basis for your operations,
it allows you to do all the fun stuff. You can't do all the fun stuff.
If you can't turn the lights on, you can't serve our patients,
provide high quality. All of that has to come first. So one of the,
one of the fun projects that we're working on is behavioral health.
So we know if you read any article across the country, there is a very,
very large need for behavioral health services for patients, adult and,
and pediatric. Uh,
but there is not a ton of opportunities for these families in these patients to
get that care.
We have started an integrated behavioral health program that has social workers,
psychiatrists, and psychologists embedded in our practices. So it takes,
that behavioral health program,
takes it out of the hospital and brings it closer to home.
But if we don't have the ability to do the basic primary care
work that we do,
we can't do this other fun additional work that our families really need.
And it's really important. So, you know,
I'd say that's what I'm really excited about because that's just the start of
what we have to come. If we can do integrated health,
we can do name the next thing in line and we can,
we can easily roll that out and support our families. Uh,
in ter in terms of what makes me nervous, I'll be honest,
not a whole lot makes me nervous. I look at all as an opportunity. You know, we,
especially when you, you step into the president's role of,
of the largest primary care group during the middle of a pandemic, it,
that was pretty tough.
I had a really great team around me and I had a great mentor who left me in a
very, very good position, uh, to be in with her, with her, uh,
leadership that she had shared with me when, uh, when we transitioned. But,
you know, we used the pandemic, for example,
to launch our telemedicine programs for our primary care and urgent care teams,
our virtual urgent care. We'll see 30 thou over 30,000 patients this year.
It's the largest urgent care that we have.
A site of service that we have is our virtual urgent care platform that came
within a week because it took us so long to talk through virtual
care. And is it something we can do? As soon as the pandemic hit,
we launched virtual care. We've invested in it, and it's continued to grow.
It's, it's been a very, very wonderful success, um, success story.
You know, I, I don't, don't get me wrong,
not being nervous doesn't mean it's not going to be easy.
There's not going to be challenges ahead. Um,
but when you have the strong core operations, you have a strong team,
you can face those headwinds, and we can make it, we can make it through.
You know, I have, I, I really feel like I'm in a, an amazing position.
I have a strong leadership team, my chief medical officer,
my assistant vice presidents, my directors of operations,
and then at the core of that,
we have a physician leadership team that we meet with monthly.
We have a board of physicians that we can go to and say, Hey,
here's what we're thinking. Are we on track? Um,
and these are all physicians who practice daily.
So it's not falling on deaf ears. It's not people who don't, uh,
work and see what's going on.
It's really important to stay close to it so we can ensure that we are serving
our families appropriately. We are supporting our, uh,
physicians and our staff appropriately,
which will ultimately just make us more successful for the future.
Yeah, it was an absolute pleasure speaking with you today,
and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Absolutely. Thank you very much.