Data Clinic
For healthcare data professionals who want their work to actually matter. We go deep on data products, analytics engineering, and responsible AI with the people doing it for real.
Data Clinic
Dr. Steve Muething (Former Chief Quality Officer @ Cincinnati Children's Hospital): How One Hospital Network Saved 30,000 Kids by Sharing Everything
Episode Overview: In this episode, Hunter sits down with Dr. Steve Muething, a nationally recognized leader in pediatric safety and former Chief Quality Officer at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, to explore how a small-town pediatrician became a driving force behind transforming healthcare safety culture across 150+ hospitals worldwide.
Topics we cover:
- From rural practice to global impact: How small-town medicine shaped a systems thinking approach to pediatric safety
- Why Cincinnati Children's transformed from a "good regional hospital" to a world leader by focusing on continuous improvement, not rankings
- The cultural shift from "safe to speak up" to "uncomfortable NOT speaking up" - lessons from aviation applied to operating rooms
- How the SPS (Solutions for Patient Safety) network broke the healthcare competition paradigm with "we will no longer compete on safety"
- Why sharing data to learn beats benchmarking for ranking: the "all teach, all learn" philosophy in action
- The 30,000 children who avoided severe harm through collaborative safety efforts across hospitals
- AI's potential to create "cockpit-like" electronic health records that prevent normal human error from causing patient harm
- Practical wisdom on finding joy in healthcare work and avoiding burnout through purposeful leadership
- Why healthcare complexity rivals aircraft carriers but can learn from high-reliability industries
Perfect for: Healthcare quality leaders, patient safety professionals, hospital executives, medical students and residents concerned about burnout, and anyone interested in how collaborative networks can transform entire industries.
Dr. Muething shares his unique journey from serving 5,000 people in rural Indiana to helping shape safety practices that protect millions of children globally, plus insights on building cultures where teams feel compelled to speak up and how AI might finally deliver on healthcare's promise of error-proof systems.
Guest Bio: Dr. Steve Muething is Clinical Director of the Advisory Network at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and a former Chief Quality Officer who helped build the SPS network spanning 150+ hospitals across North America. A pediatrician who started his career in rural Indiana, he now leads Cincinnati Children's efforts to share their improvement expertise globally while maintaining his commitment to making a difference for kids everywhere.