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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Dr. Hossain Marandi, President of SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital & SVP of Pediatric Services
00:18:04
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- [00:00]
A
This is Laura Dirdo with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Hussain Morandi, who's the President of SSM Health, Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, as well as System Vice President of pediatric services. Dr. Morandi, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:15]
B
It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:17]
A
Now I'm looking forward to our discussion because I know you've got a lot going on at the Children's Hospital there and in particular, you know, getting your perspective on how to continue to grow and succeed in the future. But before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself as well as as a health.
- [00:33]
B
Of course. So my name is Hossein Morandi. I have the privilege of serving as the President of SSM Health, Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital and Assistant Vice President for Pediatric Services across SSM Health. I am a board certified pediatrician and over the last two decades I've dedicated my career to leading multiple nationally recognized children's hospitals and working alongside some of the most dedicated physicians, nurses and caregivers in our field. Pediatrics has always been my calling. So this is a purpose that I have every day to be able to create systems that really deliver care not just from a clinical excellence, but really with a deep compassion and commitment to the patients that we care for. As far as SSM Health, we are one of the nation's largest Catholic, not for profit, fully integrated healthcare systems. We serve communities across four states of Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. With more than 40,000 dedicated team members and thousands of professionals delivering care, our mission is to reveal the healing presence of God by providing exceptional healthcare and by being a steadfast partner for our communities that we serve now. Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital is a proud reflection of that mission. We were the first freestanding Catholic children's hospital in the US and I've cared for children in the St Louis community and the surrounding communities for over 70 years now. We've consistently been ranked as one of the top children's hospitals and families travel to us from across the Midwest, nation and internationally for our specialized expertise, especially in cardiology, cardiac surgery, neonatology and many other areas. But really beyond any of those rankings or awards, what truly defines SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital is the way we care for every child and family with dignity, respect and an unwavering commitment to serve.
- [02:23]
A
I love that. What a great mission and amazing historical background the Children's Hospital has there that can really continue to serve the community. Well, I'm curious, when you think about the last year or so, what's your biggest winner success story?
- [02:39]
B
Overall, 2024 was a banner year for us. Over the last year, one of our greatest accomplishments has been building a more integrated and coordinated model of pediatric care that truly puts patients and families first. And I believe that will be the blueprint for the future. When I took this role two years ago, I could see that we already had all the pieces for a well functioning care delivery system, but they were in silos, in disparate. So the vision was very clear to me and it was to connect everything together. We aligned Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital and its employed physicians and clinics with our St. Lucie University physician Group, where our specialists and subspecialists live, as well as the SSM Health Medical Group Pediatric Network. So by combining all of those, we created a system where families have seamless access to some of the region's top pediatric clinicians. So whether the child needed routine care, advanced specialty care, or the most complex surgical procedure, they had access to a unified continuum of care with less fragmentation and fewer hurdles to get the right care at the right time. And that really resonated as we looked at what we were able to achieve in 2024. As I mentioned earlier, we were recognized again on the national level by U.S. news and World Report as one of the top 50 children's hospitals. Now, 11 years in a row, we've received that designation. And we ranked in more specialties this past year, seven in total than we have had ever in the past. We also were able to be redesignated as a magnet site. Again, only 10% of hospitals across the nation have that. And it just goes to show the strength and dedication of our nursing teams and the culture that we've built here. So overall, 2024 was truly a year that we are very proud of.
- [04:35]
A
I love that. And particularly a really amazing recognitions of all the things that you've been doing in order to, as you mentioned, become unified and provide less fragmented care and really get the better results and outcomes outcomes that you're looking for. Now in thinking where we're at today, what are some of the top issues that you're focused on right now and spending most of your time thinking about and troubleshooting.
- [04:55]
B
How much time do we have? All joking aside, let me start with something positive first. So, although not an issue, but rather truly a once in a lifetime opportunity, our focus mainly has been on creating the future of pediatrics in our community. And that's by Building a brand new Cardinal Glenn and Children's Hospital here where it'll be a transformative 14 story, 200 plus bed of the art facility that will open later on in late 2027. And it's this is more than just a building that we're building. It is truly our commitment to reimagining what children's healthcare should look like for the next 50 years. More NICU rooms with natural light, something that I never got a chance to train in advanced pediatric and cardiac ICUs, larger ORs and rooms for the families and creating family centered healing spaces. Every detail of the building we're designing has with the input of our patients, families, frontline staff really wanted to make sure that we ensure the best outcomes they experience. So that's taken a lot of our time and it's a great thing to do. But as you mentioned, we've got issues also that we have to deal with. And when I think about those, the two or three, it's always workforce shortage and financial challenges that keep me up at night. In general, children's hospitals often serve a smaller population of patients with complex chronic conditions. And these conditions really require coordinated, highly specialized care teams with unique expertise in their field. This leads to really financial and workforce challenges when we talk about delivering that specialized care appropriately, safely and with the best outcomes. So I talk about workforce and supply side. So when you look at the workforce, pediatric, specialty and subspecialty staffing shortages are an all time high, critically low across the nation. When I talk to all my colleagues, a recent study by Children's hospital association in 2023 actually outlined the shortage where nearly 50% of the children's hospitals in the United States were short staffed in specialties such as neurology, developmental, behavioral genetics, pulmonology and many more. And there's a significant imbalance between the supply and the demand. So on the supply side, what we're seeing is that training positions in many specialties are left unfilled, so they're not enough specialists that are being trained. And then on the other side, we're seeing many specialists that are reaching retirement age and choosing to retire early. Add to that, all of us in the children's space are competing for those same small number of specialists out there. And these shortages are not just limited to our physicians. Non physician professionals such as respiratory therapists, imaging technologists, and most importantly, our wonderful nurses are at a high demand now. At the same time, we've seen an alarming surge on mental health and behavioral needs in pediatrics also, especially since the pandemic. And that has created a significant shortage of psychiatrists and psychologists to take care of these patients. Now we're diligently working to recruit and retain our top talent, finding innovative and possibly sustainable care models that are different from today, and try to assure that there's no gaps in care. But that's becoming more difficult every day. Add to that the financial standpoint. Now we're tackling some of the same challenges that every health care system faces. We've got significant financial pressures from rising expenses, labor, drugs, medical supplies and more. We'll see costs continue to go up, and this is especially challenging for children's hospitals due to that specialized care that I mentioned and our overwhelming dependence on state funding and Medicaid. So what we're seeing is the cost of care continues to increase while the reimbursements for that care have not kept up and in many cases, as we see, have decreased. So we have started to work with our continue to work with our state and federal legislators to advocate for payment structures and models to protect access for these services because our families need it.
- [09:10]
A
Absolutely. That's such an important aspect of what you do in terms of being able to protect access to care and educating lawmakers, legislators and the community at large just about how the economics of health care work and what it will take in order to preserve this access to care and ability to continue to serve patients. I'm curious, when you look into that aspect of your role as more of an advocate or educator of lawmakers and community, what have you found works? Well, you really go about successfully spreading that message and being able to bring aboard folks who are influential to make sure that the right legislation comes down so that you are able to get what you need in order to care for the community.
- [09:53]
B
As I've spent more time in legislative facilities across many different states, it has become clear to me that many of our lawmakers do not understand the day to day challenges and opportunities that we have within health care. Obviously, many of them are not from a health care background, so it requires us to be teachers also. But at the same time, there's nothing better than seeing it firsthand. So one of the things that I have found has worked very well for me in every stop is to have those legislators actually spend time in the hospital, have them come here and talk to our team members, see our patients who are walking through our halls or in their wheelchairs, going to their next appointment in the oncology or orthopedics, and be able to truly have that connection to the caregivers as well as the patients and understand that a decision that's made at a far place on a piece of paper truly has effects that are felt by our parents, by our patients, by our community and by our caregivers. So having them live our world. We have a great program here called Glennon 101. We open our doors for a full day and we bring in community members, bring in legislative representatives to come here and put on a white coat and we assign them to a specific area of the hospital and have them walk through and the proverbial walk in my shoes for a day and help them understand. And that has made a significant impact on them. Many of them we have seen with tears in their eyes as they finally understand what it is takes to care for children. And that has helped to be able to move that needle a bit when we needed the care and when we needed those laws and we needed that support on those areas.
- [11:47]
A
Wow, what an amazing idea in program and ability to welcome those lawmakers and community members into the hospital and share firsthand, you know the stories and true, true things that you see every single day. Challenges of caring for the pediatric population as well. Now, when you look into the future, what are some of the opportunities that you see for growth and development over the next few years?
- [12:12]
B
So recently a leading national health care consulting company cited that the main opportunity for children's hospital growth is mergers and partnerships, particularly those that make geographic sense. And we've already seen that arrangement in the past year multiple times. Where you've seen children's hospitals come together, it is difficult to provide this service. But when we see this deliberate shift toward increased partnerships and creating these economic models, we're starting to see emphasis on more collaboration rather than competition. And I truly believe that will reshape the pediatric healthcare in the future. We have to start to find ways where instead of competing, we work closely together not only with other healthcare systems, but with other community members and others that have the same goal in mind. Another area that we're seeing rapidly move and change is the digital healthcare space and AI. I don't think any one of us have really understood and can imagine how AI will transform the care, especially from a healthcare standpoint in the future. What we're seeing already, and we've all the institute, is AI assisted documentation, ambient listening for our physicians to get their notes into the ehr. We're leveraging technology to reduce clinician burnout, increase their efficiency and then create more time to get back to what we did that personalized high touch care, trying to Automate routine tasks, leveraging AI for documentation, scheduling for predictive analytics, to understand how to take care of patients better. What we're looking to do is to free up our clinicians to focus on what we all went into this for, which is to care for patients and families. And I'm really excited that as this technology evolves, I think we're going to find more and more ways to enhance, not replace. And I want to emphasize that. Enhance, not replace, that personal connection that are at the heart of Pediatrics. I don't want our physicians in a room typing on a computer. I want them looking at that child, building that relationship with those parents, because that's what Pediatrics has been based on, is that personal touch. So I think AI will help us with that in the future.
- [14:33]
A
It's fascinating to hear and truly amazing to think about how technology can make a big difference, not only in how care is delivered, but the personalization aspect of it, too, and then allow for more relationship building and more of that human connection in the healthcare space, which I know is so important and especially with the pediatric population. Before I wrap up here, I'm curious. What do you think it will take to lead a thriving organization over the next five years or so? Given and everything we've talked about today with the technology evolution, financial challenges, other dynamics within the broader economic and political landscape, what do leaders need in order to make sure their organizations are successful?
- [15:16]
B
As a lifelong learner, I like to read every day. And most recently, and as I was reading again, we always want to stay up to date with everything that's going on. There were a couple of concepts that I read about that truly resonated with me. The first one that I really fell in love with was future proofing. How do we make sure that we create a future, that we can continue our calling and mission and deliver the care the way we want to? And that really resonated. And then second was changing our mindset, thinking, planning, acting differently than we are today in order to build that better future. So I truly believe we have to be visionary, we have to be resilient, because we know there's change. And we gotta be deeply rooted in the mission to care for patients. And how do we do that? I think as we talked already, we must be innovators, embrace this new technology, models of care, better ways to do things differently than we always have, learn how to be good partners with others, build these strong, supportive relationships with our physicians, our caretakers, but also with other healthcare systems where previously we competed with. As I Mentioned also, we must be advocates. We have to be able to be the voice for those children, especially because they do not get a chance to vote. We have to work with local, state and federal legislative bodies to ensure that there's sustainable funding and policies that protect the way we care for patients and make sure that we don't do something that creates harm for them. Beyond that, I would say we got to be a champion for our people. We got to create these cultures. We've got such talented clinicians, nurses and physicians, and we've got to be able to wrap our arms around them, make them feel inspired, make them feel valued and supported in the work that they do, because it is easy to always harp on the negatives. But there's so much positives. And I think at the end of the day, I've always been one to believe that we must lead with empathy and have the courage to make tough decisions, but then have the humility to realize it's not about us. It's about the patients that are in front of us and the patients that come in through our doors to take care of them. And as long as we stay true to that, we listen to those families, we learn every day, adapt to change. I think we're going to have a good future.
- [17:35]
A
It's amazing to hear in such an inspirational words to leave us with. Dr. Morandi, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been an amazing conversation and I look forward to seeing you as well at our CEO and CFO Roundtable in November and just continuing to talk through these points and providing additional context as well as ideas for the future. So thank you.
- [17:57]
B
Thank you very much for the time. I appreciate the opportunity. Have a great day.