The area healthcare has been slow to address, per Nationwide Children’s CEO

The healthcare industry is not taking action with respect to population and behavioral health at the level it should, according to Tim Robinson, CEO of Nationwide Children’s Hospital. 

One area of population health investment at the Columbus, Ohio-based hospital has been housing, where it is nearing its 1,000th unit affected through rental, ownership or home repairs. 

Mr. Robinson joined Nationwide Children’s in 1995, serving as CFO before becoming CEO in 2019. It is now the third-largest children’s hospital in the U.S.

Becker’s connected with Mr. Robinson to learn more about his career path, leadership approach and where healthcare still has room to improve.

Question: What was your first job? Biggest thing you learned?

Tim Robinson: I started my professional career at the Kobacker Co., which was a chain of shoe stores, and I eventually became treasurer. It was highly competitive, and I learned business discipline there. You had a single measure of success, a financial one, and you could see how you were doing in the numbers every day. Were you creating profit and shareholder value? You had to be efficient and effective.

Our metrics in pediatric healthcare are more complex and nuanced. Children’s health outcomes are our most important goal, but how do you best measure health, or high-quality care, or quality of life? How do you achieve those measures? There may be different answers depending on the family you serve. But it’s crucial to have those metrics and to be disciplined so we can all achieve the best health outcomes.     

Q: What’s something the healthcare industry isn’t talking about enough?

TR: Population and behavioral health. I actually think healthcare is talking about these things but not acting on them the ways we should.

We know, to take one meaning of “population health,” that health in populations is determined less by healthcare than by housing, educational achievement and job opportunities. Nationwide Children’s has now been developing high-quality, affordable housing for more than 15 years; we’re coming up on our 1,000th unit impacted through rental, ownership or essential home repairs. Safe, affordable and stable housing directly affects a child’s physical and mental health and their likelihood of maintaining health into adulthood. I think all of us in healthcare should be thinking through geographic and community investments to go upstream of healthcare.

Then I think we all know that children are in a behavioral health crisis, and there aren’t enough behavioral health professionals to care for them. Nationwide Children’s has worked hard to create an entire pediatric behavioral health continuum of care over the last decade — from elementary school prevention curriculums through high-acuity inpatient treatment — and we’re still struggling to keep up. I do think we all should do a better job of a comprehensive approach to behavioral health.   

Q: What’s an industry or business outside of healthcare from which you think it can take notes?

TR: We can learn from any industry that foregrounds customer experience, which is what in healthcare we call “patient experience.” Is it easy to make appointments? Are our forms understandable for everyone? If a child is an inpatient, are we conscious of the stress that their siblings are experiencing? Many industries addressed “customer experience” decades ago. Healthcare has been slower to think about it.

Q: Picture this. It’s the first day of your retirement. What, if anything, do you worry about regretting? What do you hope your legacy will be?

TR: Well, the day I retire, I hope that people at Nationwide Children’s Hospital are not talking about my legacy at all and instead talking about what they can do that day to help more families. That’s the hospital’s goal now, and I hope that I have helped put Nationwide Children’s on firm footing for that to be the hospital’s goal for generations to come.  

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