Here’s what we need to figure out:

1.   Who knows best how to build and run a hospital for children?

2.   What kind of pajamas do we want the wee ones to have?  (And other important design attributes acknowledging that children need things to be done differently than adults do.)

3.   What location would lend itself to an easy commute for all the doctors, caregivers and the patients who will use the hospital?

4.   Who gets to be the boss?

Once, a long time ago, my youngest was working her way through the bath and bedtime routine.  I heard from her room as she pulled on the Princess PJs, “Daddy, you be the King, and I’ll be the Queen.”  Hanging wet towels and mopping up the water-slosh in the bathroom, I chuckled and hollered back in to her, “You be the Princess… I’m the Queen.”

“Dad is the King.  I am the Queen.  You be the Boss.”  Hmmm, the Boss!

Sometimes, kids just know things.  Could I be the Boss?  For the record, I do speak Baby, Toddler and Teen…three really important languages that need to be heard and translated amidst talk of business models, augmented reimbursement rates and turf wars.  But no, I could not be that Boss.  I don’t do committees well.

As a serial entrepreneur, I have agreed to start and run more than one healthcare entity, and from my vantage point, there is tremendous potential in the work being done by a core group of designated doctors.  The power of the doctors who formed PACKids is being used for tremendous good.  It is no small task that we have embraced.  The plan is to catalyze this movement and bring a true children’s hospital to Richmond.  The group is MORE than up to the task.

Someone has to speak for the children.  Someone has to remind the community over and over again…”What would you want your child or your grandchild to have” when the cost seems too great.  Someone has to keep saying, “Remember, other cities like ours…they already have a true Children’s Hospital.”  Someone needs to remind the power people to “Play nicely in the sandbox.”

We’re all in this together.  Let’s not let another year go by.  We are ready!

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