Executive MBA for Physicians Blog

Educating physician leaders in the new science of medicine and management

Tag: Surgeon

EMBA Alum Starts a Women Surgeons Webinar Series

July 8, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Dr. Palma Shaw, a graduate of the Executive MBA for Physicians class of 2021, is a vascular and endovascular surgeon at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. She also runs the vascular fellowship and teaches general surgical residents. Outside of her clinical and administrative duties, she participates in several regional, national, and international societies. Below Dr. Shaw shares about the webinars that she runs with the International Society of Endovascular Specialists (ISEVS), her time as a female vascular surgeon, and her experience as an EMBA physician.

Please tell me about the webinar you run. Who is it in collaboration with and how did you become involved?

I am on the Executive Council as Secretary for the International Society of Endovascular Specialists (ISEVS). I was asked to run a live webinar called CV Sisterhood in Surgery, which I co-host with Dr. Linda Le, a Vascular Surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital. The webinars started in March 2020 on a monthly basis. We discuss a variety of topics, some medical and some practical. The webinars run from the DeBakey Studio, and I “Zoom in” as do most of the guests. I have also co-hosted ISEVS Critical Issues Series webinars, including one with Dr. Rania Preventza, EMBA’17. If an interesting topic comes up, I add a webinar about it. It has given me an opportunity to give a voice to my colleagues, especially women.

In the CV Sisterhood in Surgery Webinar, we have covered a variety of women’s issues, including:

  • COVID Impacts on Career, Pregnancy, and Family
  • Further Advanced Degrees for Female Surgeons
  • Fertility and Female Surgeons
  • Perspective of a Latina Vascular Surgeon
  • Single Motherhood as a Surgeon
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Vascular Surgery

Topics I have brought to the Critical Issues webinar include:

  • Limb Salvage During a Pandemic
  • Women in Global Cardiovascular Care
  • Women in Aortic Surgery
  • CEO Perspectives on Healthcare and Industry

Where can we find your webinar?

If you search “CV Sisterhood DeBakey” on Google or another ssearch engine, you will be able to find them. They are also available at https://www.isevs.org.

You have talked about being a female surgeon in a male dominated subspecialty. Tell me more about what that has been like and how you have overcome barriers in your field.

My challenges have served as food for discussion in the webinars. I am not only a female in the field of Vascular Surgery (approximately 14% of board-certified vascular surgeons are women), but also a single mother raising children on my own. Fortunately, I have a supportive family. One of the challenges was the lack of female role models. Often, advantages were given to men over women. We have had to work so much harder to move up the ladder. Even now, we struggle to become investigators on clinical trials and receive invitations as speakers for major vascular meetings. Women often get pushed into the venous and wound care fields, as men covet the aortic field. Things are changing slowly.

How has your time in the EMBA influenced your work on this webinar and as a surgeon?

The EMBA has been amazing for my career and this webinar. As we moved through the courses, I was able to apply the teaching immediately in my daily life. Dr. Jon Chilingerian’s Social Networking Project improved my relationships with my co-workers. Dr. Brad Morrison’s Operations Management Assignment helped me gain a better understanding about how the endovascular suite conducted operations and ordering of product. It helped my relationship with my colleagues at Upstate, as they felt invested in my EMBA and were excited that I would better understand their role. I used Dr. Brenda Anderson’s Capital Budget Project to learn about a hybrid room construction that is underway now at Upstate. It allowed me to connect with the people in charge of this renovation and understand more about what was happening in our practice.

The EMBA gave me the confidence to hold webinars on certain topics. I received limited support from my institution for all that I have done, but I felt very supported by my EMBA learning group and by the other classmates and faculty. For example, I would never have had the confidence to interview a CEO for a webinar without having done the EMBA. My recent webinar on June 21 was inspired by Dr. Chilingerian’s Everest Simulation. I got the CEO speaker for this webinar to agree to participate by using what Dr. Chilingerian taught me—Go to A to get to B. The title is:  “Climbing Mount Everest and Reaching the Peak in Vascular Surgery: One Woman’s Journey.” I also recently gave a talk called “How to Build a TEAM” for the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program for the Eastern Vascular Society. All of the content was derived from my EMBA experience.

What would you want female physicians who are considering an MBA to know?  

The EMBA is an excellent opportunity for women in medicine. It helps give us more credibility and an understanding of how the c-suite works. The exchange of ideas from the other classmates is very eye opening. Having such accomplished colleagues believe in and admire you is important. Many women are working in jobs where they are held back and made to feel like they do not have what it takes, all while their male colleagues get promoted with fewer qualifications.

I would highly recommend the EMBA at Brandeis to any of my colleagues. It is a transformative experience.

EMBA Alum Discusses Her Advocacy Work

November 4, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Below is an interview with Dr. Shaneeta Johnson, a member of the EMBA for Physicians Class of 2020 who advocates for many issues both personally and in her role as a senior fellow at the Satcher Health Leadership Institute.

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

I am an associate professor in surgery and program director for the general surgery residency program at Morehouse School of Medicine. Additionally, I am a senior fellow in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute (SHLI) with a focus on global health equity. SHLI was founded by Dr. David Satcher, the 16th US Surgeon General, to make an impact in the field of healthcare and health equity.  In my roles, I am responsible for training surgeons and preparing them for delivering surgical care to the community.  Also, I work along with SHLI to improve health equity for the community.

Please tell us about your advocacy. 

There are several areas in which I have been focused on advocating for the rights of the underserved. These include advocating for Georgians to have access to obesity treatment, working to illuminate health disparities, and elucidating the causes and possible ways to correct the disparate effects of COVID-19 on the underrepresented and underserved communities.

Through work with the Satcher Health Leadership Institute, I have addressed the Pennsylvania Senate on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on African-Americans and work towards implementing an action protocol to impact this community and eliminate these disparities. I’ve also had the opportunity to address the CMS Administrator and State Senatorial leadership along with other healthcare leaders regarding the impact of COVID-19 on our communities and healthcare systems.  Additionally, with a few colleagues, I published a call to action and opinion editorial in The Lancet regarding the impact of race and obesity on the mobility and mortality of COVID-19. It is a call to action for our community to save lives.

Regarding obesity healthcare coverage, I have testified to the Georgia House of Representatives on the impact of obesity on our community and the need for state coverage of bariatric surgery and obesity care. To that end, through work with the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgeons, Georgia Chapter, February 4 was declared Obesity Care Day in Georgia!

What would you want physicians to know who may be interested in getting involved politically?

Many of the policies that will affect our healthcare for generations to come need the voice of physicians who are practicing on the front lines. It is imperative that we are involved with policymaking and advising those who are seeking to implement policies that will impact the communities we serve. I encourage you to speak with your government leaders and advocate ardently for your patients and community.

How has the EMBA for Physicians program (and any specific skills and tools you learned) helped you at work or in your legislative work?

I have learned immensely from the EMBA for Physicians program. The greater understanding of national and state health policy, organizational management, strategic management, and all of the other classes have strengthened my drive to make a difference in the community but also improved my skills so that I may be more effective in my professional roles. I continue to work with my professors for advice and collaboration.

Is there anything else you would like to add that we have not covered here?

I am thankful to the EMBA program for the skills that it has imparted to me and look forward to further developing the skills to make a greater i

EMBA Alum Discusses His Role as CMO in an HCA Hospital

October 6, 2020 / / 0 Comments

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.

An EMBA Alum’s experience with a successful Executive Team Consulting Project

December 7, 2018 / / 0 Comments

The Executive Team Consulting Project within the Brandeis Executive MBA for Physicians Program (EMBA) is a capstone activity for each student to launch, lead, and work with a team of their colleagues to complete a change initiative that impacts an aspect of their own work in health care.

Dr. Evan Lipsitz is an alumnus of the EMBA class of 2017.  Currently, he is the Chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery and Medical Director of the Noninvasive Vascular Laboratories at the Montefiore Medical Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. During his EMBA, he focused his Executive Team Consulting Project on acquiring and implementing a new system at the vascular laboratory for image management reporting and data storage to replace an outdated system that was used across several of the organization’s inpatient hospital and outpatient sites. The medical center recently finished the implementation of the project, and he joins us to reflect on the experience.

How did you choose this specific project? 

We recognized the need for an enhanced, integrated system more than 10 years ago. About 5 years ago, we went through one complete cycle of product evaluations and replaced the old legacy system with another that was essentially a beta version, and not up to date, didn’t meet our needs, and was not really sustainable. As this became apparent, I chose it as my project with the hope that some of the skills and information I had gotten through the EMBA would help me and the team to make a better business case for the project. It wasn’t that people didn’t recognize the need, it was just that there are so many projects in so many areas that require attention at a large medical center like ours. It became apparent early on in the EMBA that we would cover a variety of subjects each of which would be valuable for approaching this problem. We could then make a case based on business sense and medical necessity, from the point of view of all stakeholders.

How has the project evolved since graduation?

When I presented my progress on the project at the end of the EMBA program, it had been presented to my organization, but it had not been approved yet. The approval came after graduation. From there, we had to purchase the product, plan the implementation, and work out some of the kinks after the go live. There was still a lot of work to be done around implementation itself and how it was going to work with IT. Much of that work was up front but there were still a lot of things on the backend that we needed to work on. We finished the EMBA in May of 2017, and it was about a year and a half until the system was actually up and running. I consider it done only now that the health system is using it.

What was the process of forming your team like?

I think we knew who most of the players were, and we involved a lot of people. As with a lot of these projects, it involved IT heavily, as well the people who manage the labs that do the studies. It also involves physicians because we actually have to read the studies. Finally, it involves hospital administration. We needed a comprehensive and invested group of stakeholders to build a strong business case. With this project, the medical need was obvious. It was the business case that was most crucial and which required refinement.

What do you think made your project successful?

I think the most important thing was making the case from an accounting perspective. I used all the skills from the managerial accounting course. We are able to frame the conversation in new way. Another was using the relational coordination tools we got in the program to build strong teams. Also, working with the team and engaging and encouraging all stakeholders to get some outside the box thinking was helpful. A big stumbling block, at least early on, was that we were going to host the entire system on our servers as the organization was understandably worried about privacy, which would have been a huge expense. Another option was to host the system remotely. After much discussion, everybody came to realize that to make this work, and in anticipation of other upcoming projects, we would need to look to host remotely. It was also apparent that many other hospitals were moving that way as well for similar reasons. So luck and timing played a role as well. The project might not have happened three years ago. The institution deserves a lot of credit for their willingness to move in this direction. As a result, similar projects might have an even easier time looking forward three years from now.

How did Brandeis’s EMBA for Physicians program help you along the way?

The program was invaluable. I don’t think I could have done it without it. It allowed me to focus on all the important areas other than just medical need.  The medical needs were important, and while they seemed obvious, they were not enough. I tried to choose a project that would let me use skills from almost every single class that we had. In some ways, this is not a particularly ingenious project, but I think that the skills and tools needed allowed for really good practical application of all the things that we learned. Practicing these skills will help me do similar projects if needed in the future.

What advice would you give to a physician who is considering pursuing an EMBA?

This program was great. In this day and age, it gives you a skill set and a perspective that you don’t otherwise get. I think to do it at a time when you have work experience under your belt is very meaningful. No matter what you decide to do with it or how you decide to apply it, it’s knowledge that makes you a better physician in the system where we are subject to so many systematic constraints. Understanding those are really important. Also it’s important in moving forward for physicians to be involved in policy and business because they have boots on the ground. Also, I would add that the program is really a great journey. It’s a lot of fun. It is a lot of work. It’s a big commitment. But I think well worth it.

It’s nothing like it was: EMBA for Physicians Alumnus Dr. Tom Tracy on his experience after the program

March 7, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Years ago, my wife and I tasted the most incredible pinot noir. Long after, we visited the winery where it was made. The owner took us to every corner of the vineyard to help us understand the hard work that went into the experience of every sip. Every small detail– why those particular cultivars, the specific days of harvest, the microclimate on that hill, and the barrels in this shed– helped us to better understand and value the wine. This wine for us is now nothing like it was before we had this experience.

As my career progressed through the surgical care of children, to the development (and funding) of a respected lab, and to the opportunity to lead and grow a new children’s hospital, I found the challenges tremendously satisfying. As “the crucibles of leadership” presented themselves, I found I could get through them more or less by following prior examples, good or bad. The teams I had were adequate and collegial but often hindered by limited know-how. I was at the table for most conversations mainly out of respect, not expertise or enlightened perspective. Like many in academic medicine, I had arrived at the role of Chief Medical Officer with enthusiasm for the opportunity to help make clinicians, their teams, and their programs successful. But is enthusiasm enough? How would my partner executives and I actually help the organization harness and deliver the innovations just over the horizon? I knew enough to know that, as in medicine, a deep fund of knowledge and the understanding of how to apply it was critical to successful healthcare leadership.

I had considered business school many times for no specific reasons. Finance or project management, marketing and economics, even strategy, were the scattered and poorly understood concepts that I contemplated. Ultimately, I just couldn’t see the return on investment.  That is, until I reached a point where I was floundering to conceptualize, develop, and deliver meaningful solutions. I could no longer fall back on, or move forward with, solely my past experiences.

Brandeis’s Executive MBA for Physicians was a chance and a risk for me and my growth as a leader. Together with a group of unique and very accomplished classmates, we were led through each business foundation to discover just how much we lacked in our background and experiences. The program, like the tour from the wine makers, gave us the opportunity to break down the elements of a process, understand them more fully, and explore how to best fit them together for your desired results.  We eventually developed into master blenders who could craft future paths through intersections of business, policy and clinical care.

Currently, I am a CMO in a big system with a large scope. My perspective now reaches further than managing a greater number of direct reports, interacting with cost centers, or ensuring a place at the table with accomplished leaders. The EMBA developed in me different and powerful faculties and internal resources. As a result, I can use my better understanding of complexities, required collaboration, and meaningful controls to find new ways forward. The barriers to health care delivery, in reality, have not changed, but my former frustration rapidly fades into fair process and business systems approaches to bring the best into and out of any challenge.

I had a call with my long time executive coach one afternoon after a particularly intense series of crises. I shared with him just how much the change I had experienced during the EMBA meant to me. I now brought a different skill set to working with an associate to bring a new genomic test “into our market” or with lean teams to develop new operational excellence at an over-capacity surgical service. Three more examples later my coach cut me off and said, “For now I’m going to leave you in your bliss, we’ll talk next month” and hung up. Listening to the dead receiver I thought, “Just like the wine, now it’s nothing like it was.”

Dr. Thomas Tracy is an EMBA for Physicians alumnus, class of 2017 and is currently the CMO in a large medical system.

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