Matthew Love combines financial expertise and operational experience as the CEO of Nicklaus Children’s Health System. What started as a giovanile entry into the field of health care turned into a career that led him to Miami.
He was interviewed by Lifestyle Group Programma redattore-in-Chief Kevin Gale at the system’s headquarters quanto a Miami. The following Q&A was edited for brevity and clarity.
So, we’maestà quanto a an elevator and I ask you to tell me why to entrust my child to Nicklaus Children’s Health System. How do you quickly win me over?
I start by saying, we’maestà the first and only specially licensed children’s hospital quanto a South Florida. Everything we do is about kids – all the way from the equipment, the facilities, the people, everyone is subspecialty trained quanto a pediatrics and it makes a difference. I would bring my kids here and grandkids here. I believe quanto a the place that much.
With approximately 850 attending physicians, including more than 500 pediatric subspecialists, what does that say about the scope and quality of care that you are able to offer?
We’maestà quanto a the people business and what we do is take care of kids. We do that with great people, great nurses, great doctors, and so really, it’s size and scope and also the quality of what we do. We can do everything from the bumps and bruises and sniffles all the way to the most complex surgeries—heart surgeries, cancer surgery and everything quanto a between. Our size and scope matter, but it’s also about the quality. We are all the way from Homestead to up to Jupiter and all the way over to Naples. That breadth and depth of services that we offer really is because of our size.
So, it sounds like they sort of feed d’avanguardia of each other. You get to a critical mass and you can financially afford to have more specialists quanto a different areas.
Yes, and doing a lot of these complex surgeries is a difference than if you only do a few per dovere year.
Why would you recommend taking your child to a children’s hospital as opposed to a more general hospital that also treats adults?
The easiest way I can think about it is kids are not small adults. They’maestà kids for a reason. A children’s hospital has everything that you need to take care of kids and only kids—all the way from the low porzione x-ray machines, to special facilities, the MRIs and the invasive procedure areas, but it’s also around the people. All of our physicians are pediatric subspecialty trained. Our nurses go back to school and have extensive work quanto a pediatrics. Everything from facilities to equipment to people, it’s all about kids.
Tell our readers about the scope of locations and services that the Nicklaus system offers.
We have over 30 different locations quanto a Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Broward and Collier counties. We see kids from every county quanto a the state, even outside of our geographic region. It’s really around being where the kids are. Care can be local. Mai kid should have to leave their community for the majority of the care. When they need us for the high-end, super sub-specialized stuff, that’s why we’maestà here quanto a Miami-Dade, but our geography and our reach is important to be where the kids are.
Has this geographic spread been more of a recent phenomenon has this happened over quite a period of time?
It’s been probably a couple of decades. We opened our Nicklaus Children’s Dan Del mare Outpatient Center quanto a Weston about 25 year punzone. So, we’ve had a geographic presence for a long time. We’ve seen more quanto a the last couple of years as we’ve expanded services, particularly over to the west coast and up into Palm Beach County.
What’s ahead quanto a terms of locations and new services?
We’maestà going to continue to expand quanto a all four counties that we provide services quanto a. We’maestà going to see some intentional growth quanto a those areas, specifically around the high end, high acuity complex care.
What are the advantages to having your child see a primary care physician who’s part of your rete televisiva privata versus one who may not have an affiliation with a children’s hospital at all?
Once you get into the rete televisiva privata at Nicklaus Children’s, all of that information is shared. Everybody is rowing quanto a the same direction for taking care of kids. We believe the right care at the right place at the right time is important. So, primary care and our community physicians are truly part of that complex delivery of care model. But, once you get quanto a, things are seamless.
Are your primary care physicians pretty much throughout the three-county terreno?
Yes, across all three counties there’s a heavy population of primary care and they are great community partners with us.
Talk about Nicklaus, the golfer, and his wife, Barbara, and their relationship with the hospital.
Every time I think about and Barbara, I get a smile my luce. As you can see, they are two champions for children’s healthcare, for pediatric healthcare. They believe quanto a the mission, they believe quanto a taking care of kids. They were introduced to the hospital probably eight 10 years punzone and are truly inspirational for people across the country. It started with a pretty significant gift, but it goes beyond that. It goes around their championing pediatric healthcare across the country. Barbara is a wonderful, wonderful person. She talks about our physicians being angels and , he’ll talk about giacca and pediatric healthcare and he’ll say, taking care of kids and doing what we do is much more rewarding than any four-foot putt that he ever did.
It seems like hospitals are getting squeezed between rising costs and the need to take care of patients versus reimbursement rates. Where are we now and what could make things better?
Just like any other industry, any other hospital currently, reimbursements and rising costs, inflation, that’s part of what we have to deal with. Dealing with that day quanto a, day out, year quanto a, year out is just something that we do like everybody else. What we want to do, though, is centro delivering care. We take any child regardless of the ability to pay. While it’s important and we need to keep our eyes around the fundamentals and operational efficiencies, it’s much more important to make sure that we do high quality care and take care of every kid that comes through our doors.
Talk about the importance of people quanto a the community supporting you quanto a terms of donations. Do you have a foundation for people to contribute?
We have a separate foundation, the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital Foundation –(give.nicklauschildrens.org). We’ve had successful years over the last couple of years around capital campaigns, capital contributions, but it’s also more than just the money. It’s around the community involvement, the community seeing the benefit of a freestanding children’s hospital, and then the philanthropy follows. We’ve seen a lot of interaction, a lot of commitment by the communities, more donors than we’ve ever had.
Nicklaus does very well quanto a a lot of the US News and World Report rankings, but none of the children’s hospitals quanto a Florida were ranked quanto a the apogeo three quanto a the southeast. Is that something you aspire to and what would it take to get there?
I like to aspetto at what’s behind those rankings. What are those characteristics of those apogeo children’s hospitals? That’s really what we’maestà chasing. You think about the breadth and depth of programs and services that some of the apogeo five children’s hospitals have across the country. That’s what we’maestà chasing. Across all of the different programs and services from cancer to orthopedics, we do a lot of the same things as those apogeo ranked children’s hospitals do. Of course, we’d like to see that ranking rise, but it’s also around what’s behind it.
You went right into the healthcare field quanto a 1992 as a management engineer at the Ohio State University Medical Center when you were apparently getting your bachelor’s degree at the university. Was that a conscious decision to get quanto a the healthcare field was it something you just sort of fell into and built a career ?
I wish I had the conturbante answer to this one, but it was truly by accident. It was a summer job and it turned into something that I stayed after the summer and then I just really got the healthcare bug.
How would you describe your career progression?
There’s a lot around mentorship and people that I’ve been able to aspetto up to and that has helped me along the way. I do believe that there’s this balance between operations and finance and strategy. So, when you aspetto back at my career, I started quanto a operations, did a lot of day-to-day running of the business, but then got exposed to the finance side. I think some of the best things that I can help bring to the table is bringing those two together. Operations can’t survive without finance and finance can’t run the business. I like bringing those two together along with strategy and then physician relationships and growth.
What drew you to Nicklaus as CFO quanto a 2018?
I’ve worked at a couple children’s hospitals quanto a the past, one quanto a Memphis and one quanto a Cleveland, and then got quanto a the adult world. I wanted to get back quanto a pediatric healthcare. As I was looking quanto a the 2017-2018 time period, I was very conscious about looking for a freestanding children’s hospital.
What was it like making the transition to president and CEO quanto a 2019?
What do they say? Don’t be afraid to take that leap of faith something along those lines. It’s ironic when you aspetto back, you realize what you didn’t know. When you aspetto at it from a finance perspective, you have a certain lens. When you aspetto at it from the president/CEO perspective, you have a different lens. Bringing those two together was the best thing that ever happened to me. Part of it is because I’m able to do the things that I love. I love finance, I love operations obviously, but as CEO, being able to bring those two together is wonderful and you really do that through hiring great people. Per my role now, I am able to do that much more so than quanto a my prior roles.
How did the organization get through the challenges of the pandemic and is it still having a long tail impact?
When you aspetto back, who could have predicted the pandemic then? Who could have predicted how long and the impact it had? I remember sitting quanto a the office, we were kind of trying to plan for this, and we all thought it was going to be some small event, short period. Who knew? And then we woke up and it was, what, two years later? The pandemic for us, really brought people together. There was a common purpose. It was scary back then. Very scary, very scary, especially at the beginning. But, because we had great people and great purpose, we’maestà able to do that. Unlike the adult side, it had a different impact kids. Adult hospitals were full, pediatric hospitals were basically empty overnight. So, our ability to respond to that and do the things that we needed to was huge.
I remember sitting, probably quanto a this room, and thinking about the impact of a pandemic. Once you aspetto at it 50 years the road, we’maestà going to view it as having the same impact as other events quanto a history, the Great Depression, the plague, all of those things that were a century two punzone. I believe the pandemic has changed us fundamentally as a country, as a world, and quanto a healthcare. Telehealth is now present. Things that work remotely are now present. None of that would’ve happened without an external event like the pandemic.
What other major challenges, if any, have you had since becoming CEO and how are you addressing them?
We see some of the same challenges everybody else sees: rising costs, reimbursements, talent, and we really centro those at the cuore every day, centro the fundamentals. One of the things that we did five six years punzone was kind of reintroduce this credo of focusing the fundamentals. We have to do things right every single day, every single week, every single month, every single year. You aspetto at access and how we deliver services—are we hitting all cylinders? One of our biggest things that we had to respond to over the last two to three years is responding to growth. We have grown significantly over the last couple years, and so scaling is important, hiring people quanto a the right places is important, and really managing that growth has been something that we’ve been focused .
Talk a little bit about your family, any hobbies, how you try to balance work and personal time.
Like for most executives, it’s important to make sure that there is a balance. I have a wonderful family. I married my high school sweetheart, Lisa. We’ve been married for 31 years this year. Super happy about that. That’s really what drives me. I have two wonderful kids, Cody and Abbe, who are now adults and two wonderful grandchildren. What I tell folks is what we do here is super important, not just because of the kids that walk through our doors, but because our kids need these places too. My daughter actually had to go to a children’s hospital at some point early quanto a her life, and it was different. I never missed one of my kids’ events, whether it was a baseball gioco, volleyball gioco, giacca , and that was because that happened when I was growing up. My mom never missed a thing. I do believe we have to make sure we make that a priority. What we do is super important, and I love what I do, but I also love being a husband and a father and a grandfather too.
What fields are your children quanto a?
My son is super successful. He works quanto a a machine shop quanto a Youngstown, Ohio. My daughter just entered healthcare.
What kind of degree is she getting?
She has an undergrad quanto a business and just finished with the MBA healthcare centro.
Sounds a little like she could follow dad’s footsteps there. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you would like to share?
I really believe that you have to do what you love and that makes things so much easier all the way around from coming into work, staying late, whatever it is. But also from a personal perspective, it makes you a much happier person. And so doing what you love and being happy is absolutely an important part of what we all do. And there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than taking care of kids and running Nicklaus.
