Dayton Children’s CEO talks about future growth

Primary care, health inequities, and workforce needs are among Dayton Children’s considerations as the hospital considers its future growth opportunities.

Feldman recently sat down with the Dayton Daily News to speak about what the health system hopes to achieve this year, along with some of its long-term priorities. Some of the answers were edited for length.

Dayton Children’s Hospital is one of 31 independent freestanding children’s hospitals in the country, and it is the Dayton region’s only hospital dedicated to children. Dayton Children’s serves 20 Ohio counties and eastern Indiana, and they care for more than 320,000 children each year.

What are some of Dayton Children’s goals or initiatives for 2024?

Feldman: Our goals all support our strategic plan, which is reinventing the path to children’s health.

One of them would be, just very fundamentally, to ensure that Dayton and the Dayton region continues to have high quality pediatric health care with great access to sub-specialists, so it’s really important that not only do we have these services in the Dayton region, but that our access meets our families’ expectations.

The second (goal) would be continuing to address the significant behavioral health challenges that our kids are facing. It is the health care crisis of this generation, and Dayton Children’s has developed an expansive strategic plan to help meet our kids where they’re at.

(In 2024 we) will continue to implement that plan, including the opening up of therapy services in Huber Heights, continuing to operate the new services that we opened just late this past year in Beavercreek, and then by the end of the year, opening a new behavioral health satellite in our Springboro campus area.

All of that supports the continued construction of our new mental health building, which we hope to continue to be on time on and on budget.

(That third goal) would be to find ways to address health inequities that exist for our kids, identifying where we have disparities and outcomes, and developing strategies to address them and target our strategies where they’re needed most.

One example of that will be the new facility that we hope to break ground on in 2024 in West Dayton at the intersection of Germantown and McCall right off of U.S. 35, which will include an urgent care and other supportive services.

Then we will continue to expand what other other kind of care we can offer there, including exploration of behavioral health and other services. We’re partnering there with a nonprofit Sunlight Village.

We’re also going to continue our focus on primary care. Primary care is the foundation of optimal health.

And then, of course, underlining all of this is the need to ensure that we have the workforce necessary to provide our services, so we will continue our focus on making Dayton Children’s a great place to work and that we attract really the best and the brightest and the most engaged employees possible.

Where is Dayton Children’s at with the progress of kinship housing?

FELDMAN: The kinship housing project is funded through a variety of federal, state, and local sources. It is not being funded by Dayton Children’s, but we are providing the leadership and will have overall responsibility for its management going forward...It is moving along. We hope to break ground by the end of the summer. It will be a really unique and exciting project.

We see every day grandparents who have taken on the responsibility of raising their grandchildren. Oftentimes, they live in environments that are not conducive to children. They’re either too small or they’re senior housing, and so what’s exciting about this project is that we’ll not only be able to provide affordable housing that’s more adequate for families, but they’ll be supportive of each other. It will be a community of of individuals in the same circumstances who can support each other.

We will provide some support, as well, as we do anticipate children with chronic disease or other conditions may be part of the families that move into the center.

How does Dayton Children’s plan to balance providing all of these services while also balancing and addressing financial needs?

We’re facing what we call financial headwinds at the same time that we have a commitment to this community to continue to provide the pediatric services that our kids need.

We do that through a very focused and disciplined attention on process improvement, always looking at how we can do things more efficiently and really drive unnecessary costs out of the system.

We also look at our revenue cycle and make sure that we’re collecting everything we should...Then really just making sure that all of our leaders and staff have the financial acumen and knowledge that they need to really drive costs and be efficient, and we’ve been able to balance that most of the time.

Certainly these last few years has been challenging, but one of the other things that we have the benefit of is a very strong balance sheet.

Whether it was building the new patient tower or the new mental health building or some of the other capital expenditures we’ve made, we’ve been able to have the support of that balance sheet and that has enabled us to move thoughtfully and not have to make decisions that would be negative to the services we provide.

What are some of those biggest costs the hospital is facing right now?

There’s no question the biggest cost that we and every hospital has is workforce. Certainly, there has been an increase cost of staff. Some of that was needed, and we want to make sure that we pay a living and a competitive wage to our staff.

So labor is definitely big cost, but also supplies whether it’s pharmacy or utilities. Other facilities’ cost supplies are a big driver of costs, and we’ve all felt the inflationary pressures of the last few years. Again, some of those things seem to be dissipating, but they have had an impact on our cost structure.

What are some of the the top pressing health needs of children?

We do a child health (needs) assessment every year. It’s actually a requirement of the federal government, and we recently released that. And there are three primary priorities or pressing needs. Certainly behavioral health, as I mentioned, chronic disease, and in this community, asthma is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases, but also diabetes. And then finally, infant mortality.

We as a community need to do more to make sure that all of our babies are born healthy and they can grow up healthy.

Looking at (Dayton Children’s) latest bond report, it has had a negative operating margin for the last three months, ending in September. But it does seem to be better than the same period the previous year. Are those normal fluctuations?

We experienced the financial headwinds of COVID like every other health care organization. And as I said, it’s taking us some time to right that ship, but we’re really very optimistic about the progress we’re making.

These financial headwinds... some of them are improving, like inflation. Others are going to be with us.

As I said before, having a strong balance sheet has allowed us to be thoughtful and methodical about that process, and we are feeling really good about where we’re at now and where we’re going to be in the next several years.

Dayton Children’s expansion continues

· An eight-story $260 million patient tower opened in the center of the main campus in June 2017. In 2019, the hospital added a $16 million employee garage.

· In 2023, Dayton Children’s opened its $78 million, five-story specialty care center with outpatient clinic space.

· Dayton Children’s is currently building a $110 million behavioral health building on its main campus. It will increase behavioral health inpatient beds from 24 to 48 and bring behavioral health inpatient, outpatient, and crisis services together under one roof.

· The hospital is expanding community-based therapy options, recently opening a location in Beavercreek, with more planned in Huber Heights and Troy.

· In November, Dayton Children’s opened its fifth “Kids Express” pediatric health care center at 6044 Wilmington Pike in Sugarcreek Twp. These are lower-intensity medical offices located in affluent suburbs.

· In December, Dayton Children’s announced plans for an $8 million facility aimed at meeting the health needs of kids in West Dayton through a partnership with Sunlight Village and CityWide Development Corporation. The project targets groundbreaking in 2024 and opening in 2025, with two areas of focus — a market to provide health food options and a clinic for pediatric health needs.

· Dayton Children’s plans to begin construction this year on a $12 million behavioral health campus projected to open in fall 2024 at 300 West Tech Road in Springboro, adjacent to the existing Dayton Children’s South Campus.

Services at this 40,000-square-foot facility will include outpatient therapy, psychology/psychiatry, and an intensive outpatient/partial hospitalization program, also known as a day treatment program, Dayton Children’s said.