SPECIAL HONORS: Administrator
Suzanne Britt, director of the Children's Pavilion at the Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU (Photo by Jay Paul)
Suzanne Britt is feeling the love.
She’s director of the Children’s Pavilion, a $200 million, one-stop, outpatient treatment and diagnostic facility for the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU that opened in 2016. She also oversees 13 medical divisions in the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics.
And she’s also the special honors for an administrator winner in our Top Doctors survey.
“Suzanne is a tireless advocate for children’s health, for the physicians and providers in our department, a leader in the field,” one of her nominators wrote.
Another cited her as an “outstanding administrator who has made major contributions to revitalizing pediatric services and sub-specialty programs at Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU.”
For her part, Britt is just glad that she can help sustain a workplace where people can thrive.
“The care that our teams provide is second to none,” Britt says. “It’s extremely rewarding to provide them with the leadership and support they need so they can focus on what they do best.”
It’s a role the Mechanicsville resident is well-suited to confront. After earning bachelor’s degrees in health administration, sociology, and women’s studies at Mary Baldwin University, she attained a master’s in health administration at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009. Britt hasn’t left the Richmond area since.
She served as a director for the Westminster Canterbury retirement community in Henrico and as an administrator for the VCU School of Medicine and MCV Associated Physicians before coming to the children’s hospital.
With more than 350 doctors, nurses and other experts in the pavilion, cooperation is crucial to success. It’s part of Britt’s daily responsibilities to ensure the myriad teams at the hospital have the time, tools and resources they need to provide the best care for patients.
“My role is to make sure not only that everything is running smoothly today, but to look to the future so we can meet the pediatric health care needs of our community moving forward,” Britt says. “If I’m doing my job successfully, our doctors, nurses, patient access representatives and other front-line team members are better equipped to care for our patients.”
There’s no one better to reach out to when you just need a job to be done, says Michael Schechter, head of pulmonary medicine and the Cystic Fibrosis Center at the hospital. If Schechter has noticed anything about Britt in the many times their roles cross paths, it’s her capacity to execute on many fronts.
“She’s the person you can rely on for things no one else seems to know how to do,” Schechter says. “She will say yes when everyone else says no.” Schechter says it speaks to Britt’s versatility that she makes such an extensive role look easy.
“It’s all worth it when we see the end result of quality, family-friendly services and facilities,” Britt says. “There are many hands and hearts involved in our team and I feel privileged to be among them.”
