It’s a new chapter for Donna Hyland. The visionary pediatric healthcare leader is retiring. She has spent the last 40 years of her professional career prioritizing and determining how best to meet the healthcare needs of children.
”When a child walks in the door, what we tell our clinicians, ‘You worry about taking care of the child,’ and all kids get the same level of care,’” said Hyland. “We’re in the background figuring out, because you get paid such a variable amount depending on whatever the insurance coverage or lack of insurance coverage, or if a child is on Medicaid.”
Hyland, a trained accountant by trade, has been the CEO of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta since 2008. But her tenure with the nonprofit hospital, which provides medical care for children from infancy through young adulthood, began in 1986.
Over the course of Hyland’s tenure, the hospital, which treats 3,000 patients daily and more than 1 million patients annually, has consistently ranked among the top pediatric healthcare systems in the United States. Hyland is credited with several achievements, including her role in the merging of Scottish Rite and Egleston to form Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, welcoming Hughes Spalding Children’s Hospital under Children’s operations, growing patient volumes, advancing care and research for children with autism, opening the Arthur M. Blank Hospital, and so much more.
But it hasn’t been an easy journey; Hyland has faced uncertainty and hard moments during her career, specifically navigating her team during the COVID-19 pandemic.
