PROFILE
By Glenda Graves | Portrait photo by Keith Branch
Dr. Rustin Morse
A Leader to Chart the Course
As Northwest Arkansas continues to thrive, the region’s pediatric population has more needs than ever. Arkansas Children’s Northwest is growing to meet those needs, as one critical piece of a statewide expansion for the flourishing regional children’s health system. ACNW’s growth will position Arkansas Children’s to deliver nationally reputable care across Arkansas in communities where children live, learn and play. Leading the team that will make this a reality is Dr. Rustin Morse, who recently joined ACNW as chief administrator.
Morse was born in New York City’s Queens borough. He grew up on Long Island and enjoyed living near beaches and the Atlantic Ocean as well as having easy access to NYC. “As I grew older and traveled around,” he said, “I realized, while there were benefits to living on Long Island, it was crowded and there was a lot of traffic, especially in comparison to places like Northwest Arkansas.”
His father was a NYC schoolteacher, and his mother was a homemaker. “My parents didn’t really push me in any way other than to try my best and be a good person,” he said. “I wasn’t very academic. I was really just middle of the road when it came to academics. I had no interest in learning until my junior year of high school when I took (a test to measure college readiness) and realized it was probably time to start studying.”
When it came time for college, Morse made a practical decision and attended State University of New York at Oswego. SUNY Oswego offers a beautiful campus, right off Lake Ontario in upstate New York. “I was fully committed when I got there that I was never going to let academics hold me back,” he said. “I had to learn how to learn. I put in an enormous amount of time trying to achieve the academic success I wanted, and I had a lot of catching up to do.”
Morse said he knew he was mathematically driven. “I could not write at all, but I liked math,” he said. “I didn’t have an interest in medicine at the time, but I volunteered to drive the ambulance while I was in college, and I loved turning on the lights and the sirens. So, when I went home for the summer, I tried to get a job for an ambulance but ended up volunteering in an emergency room instead. I absolutely loved it. And that was when I thought I would like to become a physician, but I kept it to myself because I thought people would not believe I could do it.”
He decided to major in chemistry, which then evolved into biochemistry. Morse did exceptionally well at Oswego and was accepted into several medical schools. He opted to attend SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. “I applied the same principles in medical school that I did in my undergraduate studies,” he said. “I put in the effort and the work. Adult emergency medicine is what I thought I would do, but it turned out that my first rotation was in pediatrics, and I realized very quickly that was where I wanted to focus my career.
Morse served tacos to Arkansas Children's Northwest team members at a recent celebration
(Photo by John David Pittman)
“I had a tremendous amount of empathy for the children that I worked with,” Morse continued. “I loved the interactions I had with them. They were not responsible in any way for the situations they were in.”
He completed his residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, then went on to do a pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
While in Chicago, he said he became fascinated with how some people were happy with the care they received while others were not. He believed the “captain of the ship” would set the mood for the day within the emergency room and wanted to run one for that reason. “I realized that, as a leader, my behavior could set the tone for how the day would go more so than the volume or acuity of the patients who were seeking care,” he said.
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​After finishing up his fellowship in Chicago, Morse joined Phoenix Children’s Hospital in Arizona. He was only the third pediatric emergency medicine physician hired there to prep for the hospital’s opening. Morse quickly took a leadership role in the emergency department, focusing on operational excellence, physician staffing, and managing patient and family grievances. “It was my first experience of learning how intricate hospital operations can be,” he said.
Left: Rustin and Michelle Morse with their sons, Braeden and Ei
Right: Morse and his son Eli at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Ohio
He recalled, laughing, that while performing mock patient drills prior to opening, he asked for a box of “tongue depressors and instead was given a box of popsicle sticks.”
“The moment crystalized for me the important distinctions in pediatric care,” he said. “I truly felt that if you work in a way to empower and support your team, you can achieve anything.”
While he was at Phoenix, he earned his master’s degree in medical management from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and served as the medical director for quality. In 2012, he moved to Dallas to work for Children’s Health. While there, he held the positions of chief quality officer, vice president of safety and quality, interim chief clinical officer, and senior vice president of quality and safety.
Since beginning his career in Phoenix, Morse knew he eventually wanted to run a hospital. “I love the book It’s Your Ship, which is about a style of management,” he said. “I wanted to apply similar ideas in a children’s hospital setting. I got a call from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, for the chief medical officer position in 2020. They are a large health care system and very committed to providing exceptional pediatric care. I decided to take that position and was there for four years before receiving a call about an opportunity in Arkansas.”
Morse explained that while he enjoyed his role in Ohio, he became interested in further broadening his experiences and scope. So, when the opportunity came up at Arkansas Children’s Northwest, he said, “It was exactly what I was looking for. An opportunity within a nationally admired pediatric health system to ‘run a hospital’ that is actively expanding, both in services and size, in a growing part of the state with an amazingly supportive community.”
He officially began as senior vice president and chief administrator at ACNW on July 1.
However, he said the timing was complex for his family. He is married and has two sons: Braeden, who attends college in Cincinnati, and Eli, who is a high school senior in Ohio. Morse and his wife, Michelle, decided she and Eli would stay back in Ohio until he completes his senior year. But Morse knew the opportunity was right, even though he would need to juggle family duties.
“I am spending time meeting people and learning about the history and celebrating the success here,” he said. “We are focusing on the expansion and working to meet the needs and serve the kids in Northwest Arkansas. We want to keep our kids as close to home as possible. We are in a monumental time in our history. Not many places have a secondary location from a world-class hospital, but the commitment of the people in this community is palpable. People really do value and take pride in ACNW.”
Without a doubt, Morse plans to follow through with the Arkansas Children’s vision of defining and delivering unprecedented child health care in our community. There are so many opportunities to look forward to with the future of ACNW, and it’s encouraging to know that someone as committed and caring as Dr. Rustin Morse is leading the charge.