Executive MBA for Physicians Blog

Educating physician leaders in the new science of medicine and management

Tag: Career Change

EMBA Alum starts mobile breast and cervical cancer screening clinic in Southern New Jersey

Headshot of Dr. Rachel KramerDr. Rachel Kramer, a graduate of the Executive MBA for Physicians class of 2020, recently shared about her entrepreneurial start-up within her health system, a van that offers breast and cervical cancer screening to under and uninsured patients, and her recent promotion to Medical Director of Women’s Services at Virtua Medical Group (VMG). Read more about how she got her venture up and running and the details of her promotion below.

How did you come up with the idea for the Mammo Pap Mobile?

I developed the Mammo Pap Mobile project during the Entrepreneurship course in the EMBA Program. I started to think about the high number of CEEDS patients who would “no show” their appointments. CEEDS is the New Jersey Cancer Education and Early Detection Screening Program where underinsured and uninsured women had access to mammograms on a weekend in community locations such as a church and then sign up at the appointment for a Pap in our office for a later date. When I ran the numbers, 52% of these patients never showed up to our offices for their Pap smear.

How did you acquire support within your institution? Did you have this support going into your project or did you secure it later?

I met with the Oncology Nurse Manager in charge of the CEEDS program at Virtua, and we sat down together to brainstorm. My goal was to get a mobile van out with our own mammogram machine and an exam room so both a mammogram and a Pap smear exam could be done at the same time, increasing access to underinsured women. We decided that before we asked for a million-dollar investment, we would put a pilot together to show that women would want to get their Pap smears in the van. We leased a mobile mammo van from another institution and had it come to our offices on the weekend. Women could opt for a mammogram, Pap smear, or both. It was a huge success, with a line around the block. We then figured out how much money it would take to buy our own van, gas, driver, etc. and asked a foundation how to fund it with donors. The Foundation was very interested and took our proposal to senior administration and eventually the Board of the hospital. The Board granted permission to buy a van and start in 2022.

How has the mobile clinic been impacted by COVID-19?

When COVID happened a year ago, the proposal got stalled because senior administrators were busy with the emergency. However, I wrote to the CEO and said that if we had a mobile van, we could have used it to go to underserved communities that were suffering disproportionately from COVID to provide testing and vaccination. I kept pushing – calling the CMO, who is also my mentor, and not letting senior administration forget about this project.

Please tell us about your recent promotion. What are you responsible for? What are the major changes from your previous role?

Last month, I was promoted to Medical Director of Women’s Services for VMG. I am still the lead physician for VMG’s largest OBGYN group. I was promoted because last year I was successful in putting together a new OBGYN group at our flagship hospital, which didn’t previously have its own group. I was able to teach them the Virtua culture and their group is now flourishing. My new responsibilities this year are to bring a group we just acquired into the Virtua culture and to make sure all OBGYN groups are following Virtua guidelines. The leads of each group report to me. My current project is implementing direct patient appointment booking through MyChart for obstetrical appointments and to continue to drive culture development in all of the VMG employed OBGYN groups.

How has the EMBA for Physicians program helped you in your roles?

I used tools I learned in many EMBA classes to start the mobile clinic. Accounting taught me how to put together different financial statements that I needed for approval. I used the quick pitch method I learned from Entrepreneurship. I used the leadership lessons from Leadership and Organizational Behavior. Without the EMBA program, I would never have thought up this project, which saves the lives of so many underserved women. I have never felt a high so great as the first day I saw how many women showed up for Pap screening.

EMBA Alum Discusses Transitioning into the Role of Vaccines Medical Director with Pfizer Vaccines

Headshot of Dr. Tracy FooBelow is an interview with Dr. Teresa “Tracy” Foo, a member of the EMBA for Physicians class of 2019 who transitioned into the role of Vaccines Medical Director at Pfizer Vaccines in 2020.

Please tell us about your role. What are you responsible for? What projects are you working on?

I am a Vaccines Medical Director with Pfizer Vaccines. I am responsible for providing medical and scientific information about Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended and approved vaccines. I have been working to improve vaccine confidence, knowledge about our vaccines, and internal team processes.

What did you do before working at Pfizer? Why did you want to transition into the pharmaceutical industry? 

Prior to starting at Pfizer in April 2020, I had been working in public health at the state level in both immunizations and acute disease epidemiology. I was attracted to my current role because it allowed me to focus my efforts on increasing vaccination rates and have a broader impact in my work.

What should physicians know about the COVID vaccine? How can physicians better prepare for conversations about vaccines with patients? 

Health care providers need to know that they are often the most trusted source of information about the COVID-19 vaccine for their patients. A strong vaccine recommendation from a health care provider is often the reason a patient gets vaccinated. There are many resources available to health care providers to improve vaccine confidence. One to start with is https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/vaccinate-with-confidence.html

How has the EMBA for Physicians program helped you in your new role?  

The EMBA program helped me determine what type of organization I was looking to join and also better assess the organizations (e.g. culture, leadership) I interviewed with. The leadership courses and my development as a leader through the program helped prepare me to take on this new role and join a new team. The program also helped improve my skills in system thinking and analysis, as well as organizational change management.

 

EMBA Alum Discusses His Role as CMO in an HCA Hospital

Below is an interview with Dr. Bill Killinger, CMO of a major hospital in Florida and Class of 2020 Executive MBA graduate.

Please tell us about your role. What are you responsible for?

I am the Chief Medical Officer for a large HCA hospital in Florida. It’s a great job. As CMO, I have numerous responsibilities. I am first and foremost in charge of patient safety and the quality of care delivered in my hospital. HCA makes patient safety a priority; we use over 30 dashboards to track process improvement and ensure quality. I am also accountable for driving satisfaction in three arenas: with patients, physicians, and employees.  Ensuring high levels of satisfaction in all three areas is critical to achieving our mission. The CMO has significant operational oversight for the emergency rooms and procedural areas and with overall hospital operational efficiency in terms of length of stay. As part of the executive team, I am heavily involved in financial planning and growth, and I work directly with the CEO and COO on new program development, marketing, and strategic planning. Finally, as the senior clinician, I help explain clinical matters to the Board of Trustees. I wear a lot of hats. Every day is a different challenge!

How has your work changed as a result of COVID-19?

I had been in my role as CMO for 4 months when COVID hit. I was just really learning the operations and getting to know the medical staff. Almost overnight, the world changed. We were very cognizant of the situations in Italy and in New York City. We were not sure how hard we would be hit here in our area. I was communicating with county emergency leaders almost daily and reached out to the CMOs at our competing hospital to form county-wide contingency plans. My hospital held emergency administrative meetings 7 days a week, sometimes multiple times during a day as we managed PPE, ventilator, and ICU bed shortages and scrambled to fill staffing shortfalls. It was wild. I had to organize hospital triage committees and action plans to prepare for the unthinkable prospect of an overwhelming influx of critically ill patients. We spent a lot of time with the ethics committee to ensure our triage plan was equitable in the event we were faced with a situation like in Bergamo, Italy.

We also operate a freestanding Behavioral Health hospital, which presents several unique challenges. We had to develop an entirely different strategy to keep that vulnerable population safe. Early on, we implemented universal admission testing and employee masking- well before it was recommended. Our strategy has been effective. We have had no patient deaths or serious illnesses in that hospital so far.

What have been the differences between your experience at a nonprofit and a for-profit healthcare organization?

I was initially concerned about the transition from the not-for-profit world to the corporate world. I can honestly say it has been great. We have four care standards which are central to everything we do. In order, they are safety, hospitality, empathy, and efficiency.  We take these very seriously and consider every decision first in terms of the care standards. They are the core of who we are and what we do. Patient safety is always first. Notice that efficiency is last; it’s very important but never trumps the other three standards. I actually have more safety resources here than I had in my previous institution.

How has the EMBA for Physicians program (and any specific skills and tools you learned) helped you in your CMO role? In your response to COVID-19?

The EMBA has been helpful in so many ways. The strong focus on organizational leadership was crucial. Leadership is a skill, and I learned a tremendous amount from the faculty. I had zero background in finance, and the accounting and corporate finance courses have proven to be invaluable. This I think is the key advantage of the MBA over an MHA; I understand and can actively participate in the budgeting and strategic planning for my hospital in a way I could have never done without the Brandeis program. The courses were tough but are paying big dividends (corporate finance pun!). There were so many other important courses – healthcare law and ethics, marketing, state health policy – I use the learnings from the EMBA every day.  Putting together the team consulting project gave me confidence I could navigate a complex project through to completion. The physician field experience sessions, especially the media relations seminars, were especially valuable to me. I’ve found myself unexpectedly in front of the camera or microphone several times in the last six months, and that training was worth its weight in gold.

My classmates were some of the most impressive people I’ve met. I have reached out to them on many occasions since graduation for advice. It’s a tremendous honor to be a member of this network. I would recommend this EMBA program to anyone. You will work really hard, but the faculty is great, your classmates are great, and if you put in the effort, you can do it. It’s among the best decisions I’ve made.

EMBA Alum Reflects on Her Associate CMO Role in a Psychiatric Hospital during COVID-19

Headshot of Dr. SzulewskiDr. Susan Szulewski, member of the Class of 2020, recently transitioned into a brand new Associate Chief Medical Officer role at McLean Hospital. She has also kept her previous role as Medical Director of the Clinical Evaluation Center. She is an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and trains psychiatry residents, psychology interns, and medical students. Below, she discusses her new role, how the EMBA has helped her, and the implications of COVID-19 both in psychiatric hospitals and on provider mental health.

Please tell us about your new role. What are you responsible for?

Since my Associate CMO position at McLean Hospital is the first of its kind there, I had a unique and exciting opportunity to help shape some of the responsibilities. The highlight of my role is being able to partner with the 500+ credentialed medical staff to ensure high quality, evidence-based care. When I thought about the vision for this role, I wanted to keep the focus on enhancing our unique diagnosis-based care models in behavioral health and fostering that further by providing strategic direction to the physician functions. It is exciting to think of the possibilities!

Some of the routine responsibilities include working closely with the Chief Medical Officer, oversight of the hospital’s clinical service budgets, recruiting and training physicians, provider performance evaluations and metrics, clinical process improvement, physician wellbeing initiatives, as well as ensuring that all staff adhere to safety standards while delivering the highest quality of medical care. The work often involves a mixture of tasks ensuring compliance with state health policy guidelines, regulatory requirements, and utilization management. As Medical Director of the Clinical Evaluation Center, I oversee psychiatric admissions for our nine inpatient units by collaborating broadly with the Mass General Brigham (MGB) network and community emergency departments.

How has the EMBA for Physicians program helped you in your new role?

The Brandeis program provided me with the tools I need to be nimble at my job each day. My role has a daily intersection of business, strategy, quality efforts, and clinical care. The curriculum exposed me to a wide range of these topics, and I am often referencing back to things I learned during classes or pulling out notes that I had taken during lectures. Despite beginning my new role during a time of crisis, I felt confident and prepared to take on challenges. I attribute this ability to the real-world applicability of the physician-focused EMBA where core concepts are taught with instruction on implementation and execution.

Has your work changed during the response to COVID-19? If so, how?

I was involved with and led a wide range of urgent change initiatives across the institution that were brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to maintain continuity of care, we had to adopt numerous changes in a very short amount of time. Our outpatient and partial hospital levels of care transitioned to a virtual care model at a record-breaking speed. These changes required training staff to perform work in an unprecedented way for behavioral health, while ensuring all proper regulatory and privacy requirements were met. In parallel, our inpatient services learned and adopted increased infection control abilities, such as the creation of isolation rooms, proper instruction on personal protective equipment use, pre-admission testing, and protocols of how to safely maintain a COVID-19 positive patient in a freestanding psychiatric facility.

How has the program influenced the way you have responded to COVID-19?

A theme that ran through much of the EMBA course study was the importance of being a present leader. Effective, transparent communication is essential in managing a crisis. Early in the pandemic things changed on a daily basis, so it was especially important for providers to be made aware of steps and actions being taken by their leadership team to remedy issues and maintain safety.

What trends have you seen at McLean Hospital during the pandemic?

In behavioral health, we initially experienced a drastic decrease in patients seeking treatment but this started to change approximately two weeks after the peak surge in Massachusetts, resulting in a secondary mental health surge. Our inpatient psychiatric beds across the MGB system have been filled at a 99% capacity. One benefit is that the surge forced us to work in close collaboration with internal and external facilities on daily capacity and to look at all patients waiting in emergency departments and match them to appropriate open beds across the state. This need for system integration has markedly reduced the wait times for patients seeking psychiatric treatment as well as ensuring appropriate placement based on medical needs.

Many people are aware of the pandemic’s impact on mental health in the general public. What do you think the on-going mental health ramifications will be for healthcare providers?

Healthcare provider wellness and resiliency needs to be a top priority. We know that frontline providers are experiencing higher rates of depression, anxiety, and substance use but often with a higher reluctance to seek care versus the general population. This has an even larger impact when combined with the increase in home stressors of schools closing, fear of contaminating loved ones, and guilt associated with greater patient deaths. This highlights the need for mental health programs that are specifically focused on healthcare provider burnout and proactive plans for wellness beyond traditional programs. There is a lot of opportunity to provide a stronger safety net to support that culture for caregivers. This difficult moment in time offers the opportunity to advance our understanding of how to provide prevention-focused, population-level psychological first aid and mental health care and to emerge from this experience with new ways of doing so.

EMBA Alum Transitions into Insurance Industry

Head shot of Dr. Kate McIntoshDr. Kate McIntosh was a member of the class of 2019 and is the Senior Medical Director and the Director of Quality for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont (BCBSVT). She transitioned from private practice as a pediatrician and Chief of Pediatrics at her local hospital to this role during the last semester of the Executive MBA for Physicians program. Below, Dr. McIntosh tells us more about her new role, moving into the insurance industry, and how her MBA degree has helped her in this journey.

Please tell us about your new roll. What are you responsible for?

I am the Senior Medical Director and the Director of Quality for BCBSVT. BCBSVT is one of the smallest of the independent health plans of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Working for a health plan as a physician can take many forms, and one of the advantages of working for a small health plan is that I get to do a large variety of things which might be done by separate people at a larger plan.

I am one of only two physicians employed by the plan. Dr. Joshua Plavin, the CMO, is also an alumnus from the Brandeis Executive MBA program; he graduated in 2017. The two of us are the voice of the physician within the organization. Whereas Dr. Plavin’s role is more external and strategic, mine is more internal and operational.

As Senior Medical Director, I am responsible for medical policy, coding, and supporting all of the internal departments of BCBSVT by lending a physician perspective. As part of this, I support the utilization management nurses and the appeals team and coordinate a team of contracted physicians who do medical reviews. The speed at which medicine is changing seems to be ever-accelerating, and it’s an ongoing challenge to keep up with the latest changes in technology and pharmacology.

As part of my work as the Director of Quality, I oversee our HEDIS measures, our NCQA reporting, our internal quality initiatives, and the metrics and reporting for the quality and value-based projects with our local ACO, regional hospital networks, and other provider groups. I also work closely with the quality nurse and provider contracting to review patient complaints and to provide feedback to hospitals and providers throughout Vermont. I also work with the Fraud, Waste, and Abuse department to look for red flags or concerning behaviors. Fraud is a growing area of concern in health care, estimated to cost the United States up to $68 billion annually.

What did you do before this new role?

Before I started at BCBSVT, I ran my own practice for 16 years and was the medical director for the Vermont Health Information Exchange. I was also Chief of Pediatrics at my hospital and sat on its board of directors. Coming to a health plan from owning and running a practice has allowed me to bring a useful and less common perspective about the business of medicine to the organization and to the conversation about health care in Vermont as a whole.

Why did you want to transition into the insurance industry?

I never thought that I would work for a health plan. After 22 years of practice, I wanted to do something different. Running a practice had shown me that I really liked administrative work, and I wanted to do something that let me use my administrative skills. I would not have come to BCBSVT if it hadn’t been for Dr. Plavin, who was instrumental in encouraging me to enter the Brandeis program and also in bringing me to BCBSVT. I started at BCBSVT as a contractor doing medical reviews, but quickly found that the type of systems thinking required was a good fit for me. When the Senior Medical Director position opened, I knew that I wanted to apply for it. The Director of Quality was added later as part of a divisional reorganization but has made tremendous sense for the organization as a whole and has made my position even more interesting and rewarding.

Did pursuing the EMBA for Physicians impact your ability to get this new role? If so, how?  

I think that it is fair to say that I would never have gotten this position without the EMBA program at Brandeis. Dr. Chilingerian’s teaching especially was instrumental in allowing me to enter the company as a contractor and quickly to be able to understand the needs of the organization and how best to meet them. This was a significant culture shift from where I had been before and a completely different type of organization. I think that the EMBA program helped me make the rapid pivot that was necessary to get this new role.

How has the EMBA for Physicians program helped you in your new role and which skills and tools from the EMBA program have you been using the most?

Every class that I took in the EMBA program has helped me in my new role. This new position sits at the intersection of business, health care, health reform, and politics. In addition, I use the tools we learned for strategy, finance, quality, ethics, and operations management on a daily basis. The courses have been critical to navigating the complex world of value, where quality and cost intersect. Dr. Plavin and I are both interested in encouraging providers to push forward innovative value-based projects and health reform initiatives, and we have to sell these both internally and externally, not only to health care leaders, but also to multiple stakeholders, including politicians, actuaries, and executives. In addition, I am working to optimize many of our internal processes which often involves all the diverse change management and communication tools that we learned or touched on in school, especially when working with teams from multiple departments and with multiple skill sets and priorities. The white board in my office is often a mess of flow charts and operational diagrams. Dr. Morrison would be amused!

EMBA Student gains new promotion in major merger

Head shot of Dr. Kim Ariyabuddhiphongs Dr. Kim Ariyabuddhiphongs, a member of the EMBA class of 2020 and a Massachusetts internist, was promoted to Associate Chief Medical Officer for the Beth Israel Lahey Health Performance Network during the recent merger between Beth Israel Deaconess and Lahey Health systems. Below, Dr. Ariyabuddhiphongs talks more about her new role, the promotion process, what it is like to work at an organization during a merger, and how pursuing an EMBA has helped her along the way.

Please tell us about your new role. What are you responsible for? I recently transitioned into being the Associate Chief Medical Officer for the Beth Israel Lahey Health Performance Network. In my role, I work with key stakeholder groups in advancing our goals to improve quality and increase efficiency. Our priorities in 2020 are to improve quality measure performance in cancer screening and diabetes process and outcomes in the ambulatory setting. In the hospital setting, we are working with our network hospitals to improve Hospital Quality Measure performance. We are also looking closely at improving efficiency for our Medicare ACO and have identified targets and programs we will launch in early 2020. I lead focused programs and initiatives and also act as a coach to facilitate success in Population Health.

What role were you promoted from? What are the differences in responsibilities? I was previously Medical Director of BIDCO, the ACO of the legacy Beth Israel Deaconess system. My prior role had a broad range but not as much depth. My new role, to a certain extent, is narrower and more focused as I’m working with fewer groups. I’m relishing the opportunity to work more closely with key leadership at the organizations within the larger system.

Tell us about the process you went through to get the promotion.  I had already been doing a very similar role previously for 1.5 years and had worked at Beth Israel Deaconess for more than 12 years. I have the advantage of having worked in this system, knowing the culture, knowing how to execute within our system, and having worked with leadership from my previous role as medical director at one of the large primary care practices. It was a natural move for me to now work closely with the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Clinical Officer.

I know your organization has been undergoing a major merger. What has it been like to be in a position of leadership while significant changes have been happening?  I think you can’t know what it’s like to go through a merger without having experienced one yourself.  There has been a lot of transformation in our Population Health team. While there can be uncertainty, I try to maintain calm and optimism for what is ahead. Working with a larger health system gives us opportunities to question the status quo, transform and land on a new way of operating. While change can be hard, we can take a fresh look at challenges and develop a new path.

Did pursuing the EMBA for Physicians impact your ability to achieve this promotion? If so, how?  The EMBA has stimulated my growth in many ways. It’s fantastic to study amongst colleagues who also want to contribute in a different way beyond direct clinical care and are interested in leadership, health care policy, strategy, and health care finance.  That in and of itself is an inspiration.  I have learned so much about leadership styles from the professors and my classmates. The EMBA has been so valuable not only in gaining concrete knowledge but also in giving me confidence.

How has the EMBA for Physicians program helped you in your new role?  I love reading the leadership and strategy articles and cases, amongst others, and almost all of them have given me a pearl I can apply the very next day in interacting with others in my new role.

Protected by Akismet
Blog with WordPress

Welcome Guest | Login (Brandeis Members Only)