Lourdes Boue, CEO of Coral Gables, Fla.-based Doctors Hospital and Miami-based West Kendall Baptist Hospital, brings more than two decades of experience to Baptist Health in her role as a CEO.
Previously, Ms. Lourdes served as vice president of operations at West Kendall, where she played a key role in the facility's opening. She also held positions as vice president of Baptist outpatient services and corporate director of strategic planning and business development for Baptist Health.
She told Becker's this experience, as well as her personal history, has influenced how she leads today. Ms. Boue discussed the most difficult decision she's made as CEO, her leadership strengths and the importance of networking.
Editor's note: Most questions are part of a regular series with health system CEOs. Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What has been the most significant decision you've made as CEO, and can you walk us through the process you used to evaluate options and reach that decision?
Lourdes Boue: I can tell you not necessarily the most significant, but the most difficult. And by its difficulty, it was significant to me, personally and professionally. To put it in context, I was promoted to my first CEO role in December of 2019, and I had a honeymoon period for about two months until I was greeted by COVID in February of 2020. When I go back and think of the tumultuous time that we went through, I was extremely well-supported by a wonderful chief nursing officer and an incredible chief medical officer at my local hospital. And then, of course, I was part of the system. But one of the most difficult decisions that I had to wrestle with was when we restricted family members from visiting our hospitalized patients at the height of COVID.
I have significant experience — I've always been the family caretaker. I'm not a nurse; I'm a CPA by profession — but I've always been a family caretaker. … So, when the policy came down that we needed to restrict family visitation, it went to the core of who I am and what I believe in versus the patient's safety concerns. We were trying to follow what was being developed as best practices and what our system said was necessary. We rolled out the policy, and sure enough, because I was following the line, I made it appropriate and had to go through the risk-and-reward process.
We had one particular patient I'll never forget. I rounded that evening on a unit, because I tended to round a lot during COVID, and I found a nurse in tears — a baby nurse, a new nurse — who was taking care of a patient whose daughter had said, "I need to stay with my mom because she gets agitated." We, quote, "forced the policy" on this family member. The mother got agitated and experienced dementia when the daughter left. It was just not a pretty situation. It broke my heart to see this baby nurse have this experience. I call her a baby nurse — a wonderful young woman who was just starting her nursing career and was struggling with what was the right thing to do. I remember hugging her and taking personal responsibility as the CEO for putting her in such a difficult situation, then trying to console her in the moment over what she had to go through with this family member and patient.
I decided — with our nursing CNO — at that moment that we were going to be very careful about how we deployed this policy moving forward. Nothing in life is black and white, and situations should be assessed on an individual basis. The nursing leadership would be able to make decisions where they wanted to make latitudes to the nursing policy, so long as safety was maintained from distances, from masking, and from gloving. At the time, we didn't even know how to handle COVID.
So, I think that was the most difficult decision I've ever had to make, and it was just months into my role as CEO. I didn't realize it about myself, but I do think I am such a patient advocate because of my personal experiences. I even remember saying to my CNO, "If it had been my daughter in that bed or my mother in that bed, you would have had to call security to yank me out of this hospital."
Q: What was your first job? How old were you? Biggest thing you learned?
LB: My first job was when I was 14, and it was a summer job. I remember my parents both worked in downtown Miami, and I got a job in an office in the same building where my father's office was, so it was easy for me to commute back and forth with my parents every day during the summer. I worked five days a week at 14, and I was a receptionist, answering phones and the like. I remember just about after a week of starting, I would get in the car and cry because I hated the job. People were yelling at me, people calling and leaving messages, and it was just a very stressful job for a 14-year-old.
My father went and asked this gentleman, whom he knew casually from working in the same building. He said, "Help me understand what's going on with my daughter. Is she not managing this well? Because she's so upset every day. I want to make sure that my daughter knows work ethic." And I'll never forget this. This has stuck with me. The guy said to my dad, "Listen, if your daughter learns to drive in Miami, she'll only be able to drive in Miami. But if she learns how to drive in New York City, she's going to be able to drive anywhere in the world. So think of this job as learning to drive in New York City."
Well, at the time, I really didn't understand what that meant, but I think it was building resiliency on my part. And lo and behold, fast forward probably 10 years, and it ended up that my father discovered that the guy had been embezzling money from people. So he was avoiding every call and every message possible, and I was the one that was front and center receiving all these angry messages from people. They would call for him, and I would say, "He's not in. [I can t]ake a message." People would show up and sit in the lobby for hours, and he wouldn't come out. It was just, again, putting it in perspective as a 14-year-old.
But I didn't quit, and my parents didn't tell me to quit either. So I guess in their own way, they taught me resilience — toughing it out, seeing it through, doing the best you can. And eventually, that was just a summer, but boy, was I glad that summer was over.
Q: What is one of your lesser-known talents or leadership "superpowers?"
LB: I enjoy developing people. I enjoy teaching. I have been told that I have an incredible amount of patience, and I do have patience for those individuals, those leaders, those staff members that are really interested in learning something, understanding something. I try to encourage people to ask questions, ask questions to understand, to appreciate. When we understand and appreciate, then we can get feedback that's even more valuable than if we're not asking questions.
I think people don't necessarily see me as someone that is aligned with development. I mean, they see me as, I think, a tough driver expecting excellence, driving for that excellence, trying to get the best out of people. And I think until they get to know me and work with me, they don't realize that, yes, I expect that, but I'm here to help you get there. So I think that's something that might be a talent of development, but it's lesser known.
And I've been here now, this time around, for 20 years with Baptist, I have six people, young professionals, who have reached out for me to be their unofficial mentor. I value the fact that they value being able to come to me for advice, for education, for knowledge, for perspective. So that's something that I think is part of my leadership, talent that I enjoy, and I think others do as well that know me.
Q: If you could go back in time 10 years, what would you tell yourself to start doing, or start learning about? What ended up being a bigger deal than it might have seemed at one point?
LB: I don't know that it's a bigger deal, but it's important. I think as you grow up in an organization and you're very focused on performance, and getting that performance with people and creating the right culture, I think what we forget is that as you rise within an organization, the need to build external relationships, the networking becomes important.
I spent a lot of my career in operations at the COO level. The COO is the doer, to get the performance done. And so I would say that those individuals who are aspiring to grow into that higher C-suite level like CEO need to take the time to build the networking within the industry and outside of the industry, to build relationships that will support them in the need to be much more outward-facing the higher you go in an organization. And I wish somebody had told me that 10 years ago.
Q: What are you reading up on now to prepare for the next three to 10 years?
LB: It's more on a personal level of what decisions you make as to when you trigger your exit strategy from an industry where you've been dedicated to it for 45 years. How do you reinvent yourself? How do you still stay connected to the industry you love? How do you still make a difference to patients and to staff and to leaders without having the obligations of a C-suite role? And what does that look like? And that's really more of the research that I'm doing today for the next three years now.