Kristi Baker began her new role as senior executive officer for AdventHealth for Children in Orlando, Fla., on April 7, and she brings a wealth of experience in pediatric care to the role.
Prior to joining AdventHealth for Children, Ms. Baker served as vice president of women’s and children’s services at Tulsa, Okla.-based Saint Francis Health System. She also previously held leadership positions at Novant Health’s Betty H. Cameron Women and Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, N.C., and at Children’s Mercy Kansas City in Missouri.
Ms. Baker told Becker’s she’s getting acclimated to the new role, in which she oversees daily operations at AdventHealth for Children and leads Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based AdventHealth’s pediatric care network across Florida. She shared her top priorities for her first six months on the job, discussed her perspective on expanding access and behavioral health, and offered some strategies she’s found most effective for building engaged, mission-driven pediatric care teams.
Editor’s note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What are your top priorities in the first six months, and how do you plan to approach statewide coordination of pediatric services across AdventHealth’s network?
Kristi Baker: We’re looking at building out our physician leadership team to make sure that we’ve got a laser-point focus on clinical excellence, and making sure that we’re providing the best care that we can across the system.
Also, I’m not from Florida, and being in this market is new to me, so understanding the needs of the community, getting to know the people in the community, those physicians, and what’s available to them, and trying to identify gaps in pediatric healthcare and address those needs.
And, statewide, building on AdventHealth for Children’s existing pediatric networks and working with leaders at the other hospitals, at AdventHealth for Children’s locations, to improve in their specific market. What we need in Orlando is probably different from what we need in Tampa or Daytona Beach. So getting to know those markets individually, and working with the leadership there individually to understand the specific needs of those communities.
All of this will probably take me six months to begin to get to know things and understand the resources and each individual location’s needs across the state, and how we can address them.
Q: How are you thinking about expanding access to specialized pediatric services in communities that may not have had them before?
KB: We have multiple access points and 23 pediatric emergency departments, and AdventHealth is building two additional hospitals in Lake Nona and Minneola to increase access. We don’t want families to have to come to Orlando to get the specialty care that they need. It’s not always convenient and always possible. So certainly, making sure that we have locations that are close to people’s homes is a priority.
Something that I learned about AdventHealth for Children when I first arrived is that we invest significant resources into training our own workforce. We work with colleges across the state to recruit and train tomorrow’s healthcare providers, and through AdventHealth University, to reach into local high schools and reach people at an earlier age, to look at healthcare careers of all types.
We are also looking at telehealth and virtual care so we can keep families in their communities while still providing access to specialists who may be based in Orlando or Tampa.
Q: Mental and behavioral health continues to be a critical need for children — what specific steps is AdventHealth for Children taking to strengthen support in this area?
KB: AdventHealth for Children and Heart of Florida United Way partnered in May 2023 for the “Be a Mindleader” program which is aimed at destigmatizing mental health. We’re talking about mental health and empowering kids and adults to be able to have those conversations. There is also a Spanish-language adaptation of “Be a Mindleader.” It is important to AdventHealth for Children to ensure we provide care to all of the children in our communities. And I just learned that next month we will launch that campaign in the Haitian and Creole community as well.
We also established a comprehensive pediatric and adolescent mental and behavioral health program, which has seen 3,507 patients since 2022 and is modeled after urgent care. The program is made possible by a $6 million grant from Dr. Phillips Charities.
Additionally, emergency rooms have access to behavioral health, with an option to get scheduled to see a provider within 24 hours.
So there’s a 360-degree effort to address behavioral health for children here in Florida. I would love to say that I had some part in it, but I’m happy to jump right into the middle of what they’ve created and keep that going and moving forward, because it’s so important.
Q: What strategies have you found most effective for building engaged, mission-driven pediatric care teams, and how will you apply those lessons in this new role?
KB: The No. 1 thing from any leader has to be transparency. That’s essential in building trust.
We all get so busy that it’s easy to make a decision without communicating. Being transparent and communicating with the team, and letting them know that I’m going to be honest with them — even if the answer isn’t something that they particularly want takes out a lot of speculation and anxiety about what’s going to happen.
I’m also a big fan of Lean Six Sigma — so I like the lean management philosophy of leaders “going to the gemba” — which is where you go and see the work where it’s done, to try to have an understanding of what the team is dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Hearing it in a meeting and seeing it in person are certainly two different things, and I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from team members when they’ve seen me on the floor, or I come to the board, ask them questions, and then make changes based on their recommendations.
Finally, I have learned to start meetings with “what’s good for the children?” And I’ve always tried to do that. Is it the best thing for the children? And if that answer is “yes,” then what can we do to do that thing?
