Following the merger of Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego and Orange, Calif.-based Children's Hospital of Orange County to form Rady Children's Health, the three-hospital system's co-CEOs, Kimberly Cripe and Patrick Frias, MD, are ready to hit the ground running as a dynamic duo.
Rady Children's Health's first day of operations was Jan. 1, but the merger closed Dec. 31 after receiving conditional approval in early November from California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Prior to the merger, Ms. Cripe served as president and CEO of CHOC and Dr. Frias served as president and CEO of Rady Children's.
Becker's connected with Ms. Cripe and Dr. Frias to learn more about their post-merger plans and how they plan to work hand-in-hand to ensure seamless integration.
Question: How do you plan to navigate decision-making as co-CEOs to ensure seamless collaboration? Will you share an office?
Kimberly Cripe: CHOC and Rady have worked together for a number of years, and we actually formed an alliance about 10 years ago. Patrick and I, along with our leadership teams and physicians, have done quite a bit of collaborative work in spaces like population health. We're fortunate that we have worked closely together. Our leadership is built on a foundation of history, trust and transparency with one another. I think we're really fortunate.
We've got complementary skills. We come into our roles from different backgrounds, which I think is going to be really helpful as we think about the complexity of integrating our large health enterprises. We've worked hard over the course of the planning and going through the regulatory review process. We've had a chance to really establish clear parameters around how we're going to make decisions, and how we're going to leverage the expertise each of us has when we unify under Rady Children's Health.
I think a co-CEO model has a lot of benefits and allows us to work together over a period of time, to transfer knowledge, focus on culture [and] to do the kind of things that we think are going to be really important as we look at our respective operations, bring them together [and] share best practices. I think it would be important for people considering this model to really have a good working relationship between the two individuals. Fortunately, that's the case with us. We respect one another, we enjoy working together, and we've had quite a bit of history through this alliance.
We will both have offices on each of the campuses. We're not going to share one office, but will both have an office, and we're also going to have a kind of hoteling space for the other leaders on our management team that will be overseeing two large populations, but different geographies. So we'll have an administrative presence, but it won't be sitting in one office together.
Dr. Patrick Frias: The key [to] even double down on is the importance of a relationship that's built on trust and mutual respect, and we've navigated that. I've been here now six years in this role, and since day one, Kim welcomed me to the region. As we've navigated through this, and through the alignment that we've had through the other work that we were previously doing … we've really taken that relationship of trust and mutual respect at different levels. I'm looking forward to working with Kim on this, and partnering and learning from the way that we come to this with different backgrounds and skill sets that are very complimentary, that I think will make this transition seamless.
Q: What are your top one to three strategic initiatives for Rady Children's Health in the first year? How do you plan to achieve these initiatives?
PF: It's about our people, and how do we really integrate the cultures of both organizations. We plan to take a very thoughtful approach to collaboratively working on how we recognize the strengths and values of both of the organizations and really develop a culture that's inspirational and aspirational for our workforce, for our communities, for the patients who we will serve.
Another will be in this first year, starting to launch a multi-year plan that will explore and then work on how we integrate our technology, our operations, our processes in a manner that's going to benefit our community organizations, our workforce, our medical staff. That will take time, [because] we need to be very thoughtful about that integration plan.
I would say No. 3, it's not so much new, but it's important. We have two fantastic health systems that in their regions have been delivering top notch care to the children in our communities … and how do we make sure that, if we're integrating, we do not disrupt the access, care and the quality that we've been delivering? So we're very focused on that as well.
KC: [W]e're both extremely mindful of staying true to the high level of care that's already provided in our communities. [T]hese are pillars within our communities, and there are long standing histories and connectivity. I think about our donors and our corporate partners, and we really want to make sure that we don't disrupt the great work that's in place, and that everything we do is additive. It's adding value to the patients and families we're fortunate to serve, but also the role we play within our respective communities.
Q: What piece of advice would you give to hospital executives going through a similar merger?
PF: We have prioritized our people in this. We've been very thoughtful as we've made decisions along the way to put our people first, and at the same time, recognize that we have a mission that we deliver on.
Being very transparent in the decisions that we're making and acknowledging when there are challenges. When you face those challenges, I like to say, make sure you give grace.
Understand that there can be an unknown for people. When you're coming into a room and you're having a conversation knowing that somebody is coming from a perspective that is similar to yours, that is putting the people and the kids first, but they also come with a different life experience, giving grace as you're going into the decisions and discussions. I think it's been very important, and I think it's allowed us to get to the point where we are. We've been able to work through some challenging times by putting that first.
KC: We stayed, and our board leadership stayed, very focused on the reason for this [the merger]. What is our mission, and what can we do to do even more to serve children and families in our communities? When we hit some kind of bumps in the road, when we came back to that, it really helped us navigate and keep things moving forward.
We all come to this with very good intentions and have different backgrounds. Assuming good intentions, listening and really trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes or the other community's shoes, really helped us stay the course. This was something that took a number of years to work through, and I think it's going to just generate benefits that we can't even begin to imagine. We can think about them, but I think the benefits are going to be so significant. The trust, the focus on our missions I think, are what really helped us make it to the finish line.