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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Workforce Strategy and Culture at Children's National Hospital with Gina Cronin
00:17:16
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- [00:02]
Becker's Healthcare Announcer
The most important healthcare decisions don't happen in isolation. They happen when leaders come together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings together more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives this April in Chicago. With 800 speakers from Ascension, Cleveland Clinic, Common Spirit, and more, the conversations get real. Leaders will share how their scenario planning for policy shifts brief, 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 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit BeckersHospitalReview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right.
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Laura Deardeau
This is Laura Deardeau with the Beckers 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.
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Gina Cronin
Thank you so much, Laura. I'm very pleased to be with you here today and with Becker.
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Laura Deardeau
Absolutely. Now I'm excited for our conversation because I know there's so much happening in healthcare, 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?
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Gina Cronin
Oh, absolutely. I serve as Chief People Officer here at Children's national hospital in Washington, D.C. and we are one of the few independent, freestanding children hospitals in the U.S. it's a pretty special place to work and we're very honored and humbled to be recognized as a top 10 children's hospital in the U.S. our history is really, really long and interesting. We have over 155 years. We actually started and opened our doors in 1870 serving orphan children in the Civil War. If you can imagine that. We're the only hospital actually that's headquartered in Washington, D.C. and we care for kids and families across the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia in our primary service area, but also the rest of the United States and many, many children across the globe. Our mission 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'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 here.
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Laura Deardeau
That's amazing to hear. You know, truly outstanding to have that opportunity, you know, on the clinical side in clinical operations and then figuring out how you can bring your specialization for the workforce too, 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?
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Gina Cronin
Yeah, you know, when I joined, I also joined our 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 is 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 a people lens on a few things. The first, it was really important for us to get leader alignment. So as we had this strategy, how did we get 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 board chair, with each other. A second part of that was organization design. Right. So how we really wanted to look at how we were structured to deliver on the strategic goals and, and what did we need to do to adjust? Did we need to adjust to be a contemporary children's hospital? So we looked across the organization, at how we were organized, our roles within the clinical operations, 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, 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 started with our executive team, we started with our directors and above, and then we 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 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 five year strategy ahead, how do we equip our leaders with the ability to lead through that change, to support them with being able to frame to their teams the why?
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Laura Deardeau
Right.
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Gina Cronin
Why are we doing this and having those tools to get their teams to the other side of it? So that's what we've been focused on on the past year. It's been amazing work, but it's been really invigorating to watch everyone lean in together into it.
- [07:19]
Laura Deardeau
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 as you're developing 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 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 big priorities and headwinds that you're focused on as you're continuing to go through this process in 2026?
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Gina Cronin
Right. Well, headwinds, I think that's another word for opportunities. Right. 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 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 our children and families across all of our ambulatory services so that they have a very standard and outstanding experience across any location 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 going to 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 going to be. We want to 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 workforce design around these big areas, ambulatory redesign, EPIC redesign, that will have that good, strong capability to handle any type of disruption that AI might have for some of our workforce. 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 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 supporting it from hr, but it's partnering very deeply with our, with everyone across the organization, from nurses to physician leaders, operational leaders and more. So those are really the two big focus areas we have ahead around strategic workforce design and well being. I love that.
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Laura Deardeau
And you know, it's both aspects are so critical. And I know, especially today, when you think about bringing AI into the healthcare organization operations and, you know, anything along those lines, there's always going to be a little bit of challenge or fear of the unknown. But it sounds like being able to have the right message to your teams and understanding that redesign and caring for them and how they're fulfilled within their roles makes a big difference. And I'm curious. 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 things to come into the organization. So how do you create like that nimble and resilience is, you know, you're moving quickly, I think, especially right now when technology evolves so quickly.
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Gina Cronin
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's why we want to start working on it today.
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Laura Deardeau
Right.
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Gina Cronin
And so what we do know is changing is we do have 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 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 an AI change impacts us, we'll have the toolkit to know how to approach it. So that's why we're hoping to lean, lean into it and not kind of be back on our heels and reacting to it.
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Laura Deardeau
I love that. It 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 going to have to do? I know, you know, even having growth initiatives 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?
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Gina Cronin
Yeah, well, it's pretty daunting, even the few imperatives I put out for you for the upcoming year. So I think we're really going to 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 change that we have coming in that we know are going to allow them to care for patients in much more contemporary fashion. But when you have too much change, right. You have to be worried about 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?
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Laura Deardeau
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 those 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?
- [14:49]
Gina Cronin
You know, it's hard. I think it's going to be hard to know what we're going to need to pause on. There's certain things that we know we've got to deliver. Right. So we are going to be implementing a transformational ERP across the organization. We are bringing epic. We are committed to the things within our strategic plan. So I think it's going to have to be, we're going to 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 lower on the priority. So, you know, we're, everyone is super ambitious and wants to do everything everywhere, but there are points where we're just going to have to say, this one's going to have to wait. So I think it's going to really be a team effort with us really being almost ruthless about prioritization around what needs to happen and what's most important for caring for kids.
- [15:49]
Laura Deardeau
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?
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Gina Cronin
Well, again, we have this incredibly special mission 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 care. 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 going to be where our focus is and which is really centered around our middle.
- [16:39]
Laura Deardeau
Got it. That makes a lot of sense, you know, is a great way to think about how you can grow and serve your patient population. Thank you so much, Gina, for joining the podcast today. This has been so much fun to kind of learn from you and gain your perspective on everything that's going on in healthcare and 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 touching on many of these themes too. So I look forward to seeing you there.
- [17:05]
Gina Cronin
Thank you so much, Laura. It's great to chat with you, and I'm excited to meet everyone in April as well.