Larry Barnard was recently named president of Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health’s $1 billion freestanding children’s hospital in Las Vegas — the first such facility in Nevada.
He brings a wealth of experience to the role, most recently as associate vice president of Intermountain Children’s Health in Nevada. He also has held various leadership roles within San Francisco-based Dignity Health and University Medical Center in Las Vegas.
Mr. Barnard said Intermountain’s plans for the hospital are about more than simply building the first such hospital in the state; they are about creating a healing, engaging environment that is distinct from other organizations. He recently sat down with Becker’s and discussed his commitment to the Intermountain project, as well as his long-term vision for it.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: You’ve made it your personal mission to bring a comprehensive children’s hospital to Nevada. What moments or experiences have shaped that commitment most deeply for you?
Larry Barnard: I’ve been in town for over 15 years now, and the history of Las Vegas is that we have a lot of great providers, and we have some really shining areas and gems in healthcare. And then there are other areas that haven’t met the expectations of the people here. And so, the more I’ve looked at the pediatric landscape, that is an area that didn’t get the attention it needed for various reasons.
For four years, I’ve been trying to build a children’s hospital here. And when I was the CEO of UMC, which is the level 1 trauma, county-owned facility — a safety-net hospital — as soon as I got there, that was one of the first discussions. There isn’t a children’s hospital, and there needs to be one. And so, it shapes my healthcare journey here in this town, and realizing that it’s something that doesn’t exist in the entire state. Having a stand-alone children’s hospital pushed me toward wanting to make this a reality.
Q: As you guide the Nevada Children’s Hospital from groundbreaking to opening, what leadership priorities are top of mind for you right now — and how are you planning for Day 1 operations?
LB: The operational side of it really stems from leadership. And having the right leadership in place — to me, that is the most successful that this project is going to be. Having the right leaders here, and the ones to understand that not only is it a hospital that is going to take care of children, but it is going to be a place for families to heal. It’s going to be a beacon of hope for all of those people in the state. This can’t just be a project for Intermountain. This has to be a project that incorporates physicians that are here. It needs to incorporate families that have gone through the healthcare continuum. It’s got to be the right facility for academics and research.
So it really is not just a hospital project in a normal sense. It’s something that is really going to be for the entire state of Nevada. You have to look at it in that mindset — to realize that there are a lot of stakeholders that you might not normally see in a regular healthcare project. Having the right leadership here that understands the caregivers, understands the physicians and their needs and wants, and incorporates other people in the community into this design and operations is critical for the success.
Q: What does building a “model health system for children” in Nevada look like in practice? How do you define success over the next five years?
LB: We’re utilizing all of the information that we have from other children’s hospitals and looking at the newest best practices and incorporating newer technology. It really is: How do we start on day one being the best facility we can be? And then over the next five years, success has a couple of different pieces. One is obviously quality and safety — ensuring that we’re meeting the standards of care. But the other piece, to me, is keeping the families here and keeping them local. Right now, we have a lot of families that have to travel out of state. Some people have to quit their jobs to take care of a child. They have to have one parent go off for a couple of weeks to go care for a child. And so, really, creating a center of excellence for pediatric healthcare — but keeping families together and keeping the community together — is what’s going to show that we’ve made a real difference here.
Q: You’ve led major health organizations across the state. What lessons are you bringing from past roles into this next chapter with Intermountain?
LB: Leadership is the most important thing. I was an Army grad, and then in [the] Army — so Vegas is the longest I’ve lived in one place, so it’s become home. … I was a helicopter pilot in the Army. I went to West Point, and that’s really where I started my leadership journey and understanding the importance of giving people a voice that might not necessarily have one. Having that humility and understanding to know it’s great that I’m the president, but there are thousands of more important people that are going to be giving care and really affecting lives, and my role is to serve them so they can do the best that they can to take care of the patients and the families. And so, leadership is really going to be the biggest focus on making this work. If we don’t have the right caregivers and the right staff in this facility, it’s just a nice, beautiful, shiny new building, but the care aspect really comes down to the human assets and people. And being a good leader is what allows them to do the best that they can — but you give that care we all deserve here.
Q: What else are you thinking about as you look ahead?
LB: Healthcare is difficult and overly regulated and is going to continue to be. For me, as an administrator, a lot of the things that we’re doing are behind the scenes, and it’s not necessarily things that a patient’s going to understand or be connected to. We’re going to put a lot of focus on how to make this new hospital the best place for healing possible — and that’s not just the medicine, that’s not just the surgery, that is the engagement with the families and the children.
We’re doing a lot of things that are not normal in a hospital program design and experience standpoint. We’ve done tours of casinos here in Vegas to look at how they interact on a customer service basis.
We did a tour of AREA15, which is a fun, interactive space that’s off the Strip. We went to other children’s hospitals. We’re trying to partner with groups that we don’t normally. A good example is we’ve reached out to Steve Aoki, the DJ here in town, and he wants to be a part of it. We reached out to other entertainers here to see how they can be a part of this.
We’re trying to not just look at how do we do healthcare like we’ve always done. How do we take some of the exciting and fun things from other industries and bring them here, so that kids can have an experience that isn’t just a sterile, four-wall environment, but one that focuses on the fact that they’re children.
We talked to Lego and they sent us the designs for an MRI made out of Legos. How do we incorporate that? What we’re trying to do is create something unique and different — so that other children’s hospitals can come here and learn from it — and take all the things we’re doing, and if it works for them, incorporate it into theirs. And if not, maybe we’ll learn something from them that we can use as well.
I want this to look more as a healing, engaging environment than just another hospital.
