Sep 15, 2026 · 44 min · 13 segments
Seattle Children’s CEO Dr. Christopher Longhurst wants to reach a million patients across a million square miles. That kind of scale will take more than doctors and hospital beds. It will require…
Christopher LonghurstGuestMatt AllenHostWell, what I, what I admire about that, Curtis, is that, you know, being willing to test ve- very cautiously, right? Being kind of a leader in that space.
I mean, it's a real leap, and it does require some kind of real decisive leadership to actually push that forward, 'cause I could imagine you could get frozen into thinking of all the possibilities of what could go wrong.
But if there aren't folks that are out there on the edge testing these things, then the rising tide won't ultimately lift all boats.
So, uh, appreciate that you guys are being very cautious about it, but being willing to test and focused on the right things as far as the outcomes go.
Yeah, I really appreciate that, Matt, and I think that's part of our responsibility as a national top 10 children's hospital is to help develop the future of pediatric healthcare.
So another example that I'm really excited about is helping primary care practices stay afloat.
So there've been a lot of changes over the last 20 years, both around national regulations, payment reform, and other things that make it harder for independent pediatricians to stay independent.
We wanna help support that, and so we're doing things like partnering as part of our clinically integrated network and rolling out our technology platforms to make it easier for these pediatricians to practice.
And in fact, one of the goals that we've set out with our board of trustees, last year we saw six hundred thousand encounters.
Our patients on average see three doctors per year, and so that's about two hundred thousand individual patients that we saw.
And so in five years, I wanna seeing five hundred thousand patients, and in 10 years we're gonna see a million patients.
It's the connected lives on our technology platform, 'cause we're gonna build the best pediatric AI platform to make it possible to provide the best care.
And I want pediatricians in rural northeastern Washington state, maybe Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, and elsewhere, using that platform to deliver great care.
Yeah, you've really educated me on that, of like creating these kinda network of systems.
Like Seattle Children's doesn't have to be the everywhere, everything in every single location, but you can create a center of excellence-
... and then have kind of the kinda open protocol sort of mindset where everyone can kinda tap into that data and g- having a deeper impact outside of just-
Well, what I, what I admire about that, Curtis, is that, you know, being willing to test ve- very cautiously, right? Being kind of a leader in that space.
I mean, it's a real leap, and it does require some kind of real decisive leadership to actually push that forward, 'cause I could imagine you could get frozen into thinking of all the possibilities of what could go wrong.
But if there aren't folks that are out there on the edge testing these things, then the rising tide won't ultimately lift all boats.
So, uh, appreciate that you guys are being very cautious about it, but being willing to test and focused on the right things as far as the outcomes go.
Yeah, I really appreciate that, Matt, and I think that's part of our responsibility as a national top 10 children's hospital is to help develop the future of pediatric healthcare.
So another example that I'm really excited about is helping primary care practices stay afloat.
So there've been a lot of changes over the last 20 years, both around national regulations, payment reform, and other things that make it harder for independent pediatricians to stay independent.
We wanna help support that, and so we're doing things like partnering as part of our clinically integrated network and rolling out our technology platforms to make it easier for these pediatricians to practice.
And in fact, one of the goals that we've set out with our board of trustees, last year we saw six hundred thousand encounters.
Our patients on average see three doctors per year, and so that's about two hundred thousand individual patients that we saw.
And so in five years, I wanna seeing five hundred thousand patients, and in 10 years we're gonna see a million patients.
It's the connected lives on our technology platform, 'cause we're gonna build the best pediatric AI platform to make it possible to provide the best care.
And I want pediatricians in rural northeastern Washington state, maybe Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, and elsewhere, using that platform to deliver great care.
Yeah, you've really educated me on that, of like creating these kinda network of systems.
Like Seattle Children's doesn't have to be the everywhere, everything in every single location, but you can create a center of excellence-
... and then have kind of the kinda open protocol sort of mindset where everyone can kinda tap into that data and g- having a deeper impact outside of just-
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