The UAB Administrative Fellowship with Morgan Gaghen

<p>[Music] all right good afternoon everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy and here with me from the University of Alabama is Morgan why don't you uh go ahead and introduce yourself good afternoon thank you for having me U my name is Morgan gagan I am a um the director of operations for UAB Highlands hospital which is part of the UAB medicine Health System Z I'm so happy that you were able to join us and share a bit about your role and then also the amazing Fellowship that University of Alabama has I really appreciate your time you started your career with University of Alabama right in the bachelor's degree of Health Management yes that is correct I actually even before that I was an occupational therapy assistant at UAB Hospital um which is kind of what led me to the bachelor's program um um in Healthcare Management I thought I was going to go back to grad school to be an OT and got into those Healthcare management classes and um really enjoyed what I was doing in those classes and learning starting to pick up projects within um my department in the hospital um and I had a really great mentor at a time that um was my manager in therapy and um kind of with her help and guidance realized I think I'm going to go back to school for healthcare administration and get my grad degree there um so that's kind of what led me down that pathway and ended up as well because my background was clinical um I decided to do a dual mha and MBA degree so trying trying to beef up that kind of finance and admin side since I was coming more from the clinical side and that's an excellent combination too that's actually you know a combination we've been trying to get more programs to look into is offering an MBA to get you know kind of Finance knowledge outside and in healthcare but also the mhsa which pres provides you with really that I think specific knowledge on how the healthare finance systems work can you kind of shed any light on the benefits that you've received from combining these programs as opposed to just taking them alone yeah I think for me it probably would have been okay if I had just done the msh degree we have a great program where you do get to learn about Finance statistics all different things in healthcare but what I found really beneficial about doing both those programs together is that MBA degree really focuses on the full business industry so I could get a better idea of how does Healthcare um compare to the Auto industry and how does it compare to the tech industry so it it really helped me kind of be able to see outside of the healthcare box as well which is always I think really important when you're in the administrative role because things are changing so quickly in the healthcare industry and we do tie into the tech industry and different things like that as well so to me it helps you think out of the box a little bit more as a leader and then like I said too just just kind of getting a more robust um Financial background and learning I uh I'm getting my MBA now and it's you know it's nice for what you're saying you know you learn the industry I feel like I have a good position in the industry but then when it comes to things like like Medicare Finance which is super complicated and almost its own unique Niche I'm thinking that maybe an mha would be a good add-on to my MBA so I know the specifics and then so after you did your degree what did you then pursue after that yeah so when I did my degree and when I was looking for an msh program in particular because I didn't have a lot of management experience um or administrative experience it was on that clinical side although I had gotten to take part in a lot of projects and teaching and things I knew I wanted to complete a fellowship after my degree so I ended up looking for a program that incorporated Fellowship into um into the um education program which I know you can do it either way either a program that requires that or doesn't require require it you can always apply for a fellowship which is great um so I ended up wanting to do that Fellowship because to me the people that I had seen um and talked to that had completed fellowships it was just a great learning experience of where you get to get that management experience you get to get that leadership experience and you don't quite yet have to dig into I'm going to start working in tele medicine or in ambulatory you get to explore all those areas and kind of learn about healthc care as a whole in the in a Health Care system so that you do have a big picture understanding of healthc care in a system and get some hands-on experience and then kind of get to narrow day on like this is where I'm going to focus on so it's really a good opportunity for students who might not exactly have maybe lots of experience or maybe that kind of narrowed down kind of vision what about students who do have more experience do you feel like let's say maybe they're making a little bit over what the fellowship salary is maybe they have a few years do you still think there are opportunities for them to learn as well yeah I think I think there's definitely opportunities for them to learn and benefits of still doing a fellowship I I know it can be tough because sometimes if you're already making a higher salary and maybe you have a family it's hard to take that pay cut to do a fellowship um but I think it's really beneficial even just for kind of networking and meeting people throughout the health system and getting to kind of pick their brain about different areas that they work in and how they as a leader um take on challenges differently than leaders in another area um so I think it is beneficial I know even like with our fellowship program at UAB we absolutely are open to taking people that are more experienced too or on the lower experien and we don't look for just one type of candidate um but I I think there's still benefit to doing it even if you've already been a manager or been a director I really appreciate that too because I knew that's something our maybe older students who some of them come from nursing some of them come from other areas who are wondering about so what do you do now you've you've gone through the fellowship you've gained excellent experience and then what kind of was your first role like out of Fellowship yeah so my first role um I started on an interal basis and ended up um getting to move to it permanently um I am now director of operations for our Highlands hospital um so it's about a mile down the road from our main campus UAB if you don't know has TW over 1,200 beds as a whole so the Highlands hospital we're 135 bed in patient campus um we have Ed ORS um clinics um so I'm our on-site administrator for this campus so I think something that was really helpful for me in being able to move on to this role where I I kind of have a lot of a lot of responsibilities and areas that I'm covering is that the fellowship gave me exposure to those things I got to work with Radiology I got to work with Center for patient flow who does patient throughput and placement um I got to work with our Ed and different operations all throughout so that it made me um a candidate that could take on something that I I now work with in patient and clinic and Ed in our agef friendly Services which is another fun thing about our campus we um have a geriatric Ed geriatric clinics um acute care for the elderly unit so we do um kind of that generalized community care but we also have a focus within geriatrics on our campus as well which is is um a great compliment to our main campus which is a true academic Medical Center so you you know have tremendous responsibility and you're saying that you know you've done better in the role because of that Fellowship what I'm wondering is do you feel like it would have been overwhelming to go straight from your mhsa to the role you're in now as compared with the fellowship yeah I I definitely think it would have been a lot um tougher for me to go straight to this role without fell Fellowship even one of the things that um people might not always realize is just because of the fellowship um that I went through and getting to meet so many leaders at UAB when I moved into this role if I had a question or if an issue popped up or if we needed to do a new project and problem solve through something I knew very quickly who is who is the leader that I can call that works within ambulatory or Works within some of our procedural space um like who are leaders that are experts in this area that can help me connect the dots of who do we need to pull into this project how do we get this done um so I think just being able to know who to call even to the team that I work with here at Highlands and some of the Physicians that like interviewed me and work with me every day they were like something that is so helpful is if I don't know what to do I can call you and you know who to call like whether you know the answer right then or if we've got to figure it out together you're going to be able to figure it out with us so it's made me a better administrative partner to the clinical team I think that's excellent that's a huge and know in Sig Sigma we learned that in Japan one of the reasons why their factories for automotive manufacturing was running so well was because the managers were required to go and be in every Department before doing that and so I think that that's always been something I love when fellowships are a wide range they don't you know stick you doing one thing so that's excellent to hear one of the kind of important questions I think is how you know you mentioned that connections were important just now you gave us some great examples how does the fellowship you know encourage and promote those connections are there Mee and greets you know what does that look like yeah we we've tried to go through iterations of this throughout the years when I was a fellow the first thing I did for probably my first two months I had about 60 meet and greets with leaders throughout the health system so we still we still do that but we've gotten to where we're trying to structure that a little bit better and split it up because even though it's good it's a lot of info at once and you're trying to remember who those people are so we've we've been putting a little more structure to the fellowship program here so we still do initial meet and greets especially with that core team of Executives that you see um in the hospital and in ambulatory so we spend about two months of letting you get to know those teams in our leadership development office because we have a good Core group that is able to teach leadership skills and help home those within our health system um but now we we've tried to make it a little more structured that so after your orientation you spend about um five months in hospital operations continuing to do those meet and greets while you're doing projects so then it kind of clicks a little bit more um of what's going on um because you're able to do something while meeting people and getting introduced to people and then you switch over to the ambulatory side um and you kind of do the same thing again um so we found that because we're such a big Health System it really takes a good two years to get kind of a good understanding of that first year where you're meeting people digging into projects and then that second year where hopefully you're able to take on really meaningful projects that'll develop into um hopefully whatever your next role is going to be but even if you decide to explore something different or apply for something that you haven't tried before we're still open to that um but we we try to make it a more intentional experience of getting to where you can see all those areas of operations um getting to see strategy Finance um ambulatory and and be able to kind of get to know all those areas and kind of have a hands-on experience with all those areas and it seems like you guys are really doing a good job uh based on our research the director position was the most common after Fellowship followed by a service line kind of manager and then the third was a VP so it it seems like it's are very successful at giving people the ability to kind of lead in that way one of the other questions I have for you is what was the application process like for yourself and what about individuals coming from outside of Alabama is it very competitive how would you describe the situation yeah we we have tried to um get better and better at recruiting nationally for this program so we we we open up this process to anyone that wants to apply we definitely try not to just focus on the Alabama Market we want people from all over the country to jump in and apply sometimes it can be scary because people may not know what it's like to be in Alabama or in the Burman cam setting but we are we're we're a small pretty easy to travel city which does make it a lot better for recruiting in Alabama but the for us the process looks like usually in late summer around August um we'll start accepting applications and have a deadline of early September um last year it was September 4th so about the first week of September we update that timeline every year and put it on our website but application materials we do typically a resume cover letter um and then some type of personal statement we try to get it to tie into why do you want to be here at UAB what interests you and why are you a good fit so um just trying to get to know you a little bit better through that personal statement and so um as we're trying to open up this nationally we then go in and do a blinding process for our applications so we try to take off any identifiers for location gender race school we try to even the playing field there and then actually just kind of look at like what is tying you to the organization what are your skills that that you know you have and your experience that you have and then go through kind of a resume review process with leaders in the organization um and then the people that move on to the next level we do a zoom interview with um and then we narrow down that c the candidate pull a little bit more to about 5 to8 at that point and we'll bring those candidates on site to interview with our executive team tour the campus um we usually take them out to dinner and um see Birmingham let them get to know the area because if you've never been to this area it can be hard to judge unless you actually come here whether you want to come here so um we we try to let them come visit on site to make sure that they want to be here as much as we want to have them here and we do we we help them coordinate that and um pay for flights and hotels to come on for the day um so it's a short overnight visit but it's a good little stay to get to see the city excellent so that's a great resource for the candidates who are applying and and probably one of the reasons why I'd encourage people to apply to this program is because it seems like out of you know there's a lot of programs that do take care of the candidates but some don't and it seems like you're gu you know your program really tries to take care of the candidate so that's wonderful uh do you see a lot of applicants are you still trying to you know get some more like how does that how does that look I mean we we are always open to more we've it's I know probably for more more organizations it's been very up and down since kind of Co um we've had years where we've had um kind of 100 to 200 applicants we've had years where we have more like 50 applicants so it's kind of up and down year to year um but it can be pretty competitive because you're going up against a big pool of people um but but we are always open to more applicants we've got a good crew um here that helps us go through those resumés so we we really do read every single one of them no matter how many we get and then tell me more about that blinding process because I was talking to some students from Louisiana and then some up in the uh New England region and they were you know expressing some frustration that some of these schools seem to only recruit from their school or some like ivy league students and they didn't like they you know really guess kind of got along with with that so much so how does that work for for the blinding you were saying that you remove any of the identifiers yeah so we do have a little bit of a pre-screening process through our HR so once the applications get to us we know that they're all in a grad school program are all recently graduated so we we know that they are at least in school for healthcare administration or Healthcare leadership in some way MBA um so we know those candidates getting to us have at least that requirement which is really the Baseline requirement for Fellowship to us um so then because we want to make it an even playing field and even though like I'm here saying I want to recruit nationally we all have biases that we don't realize so I might see somebody and go oh well they're a UAB candidate I went to that program I know it's a great school so we don't want that to happen even though we do we have those candidates and we enjoy them I don't want to see a candidate that says uh we've had students from Colombia for example a great school um I don't want to see that and automatically have um just a bias in my head because I see that school and I don't want the same thing to happen um for other reasons as well so that's what kind of kicked off that blinding process we had met with our um Chief diversity officer and just said we want to make sure that we're being Equitable getting great candidates giving everybody a chance what do we do and they said you know this is a great place to start because you can you can judge people off of a resume even if you don't realize you're doing it so that's kind of how we we started that process up and it and it's gone really well for us we found that we'll go through that process start picking candidates and then unblind them and we'll have a mix of people from everywhere um so for us that has been a huge uh win in our process that's great and I love how you met with the chief diversity officer for that that's really important does the candidates are they introduced to the diversity team when they come in is there is that part of the executive team yeah they they're part of our executive team um typically at UAB we have different employee resource groups um whether it's for women in healthc care lgbtq um I think we have about 10 resource groups all together within our diversity office so if people have like a particular interest or something they relate to we try to get them involved with those resource groups really early on um but we do have things like um minority mentoring groups and things like that through our dver diversity office that if people want to jump in and tie into those things we we help them get connected but in general too just as part of if it's something that they're like well that doesn't really resonate with me we still do introductions with that team um and get to know them a little bit better so that resource is always there if somebody changes their mind that's excellent I I love you have the minority mentoring that has been something that I've heard so many times from fellows and administrators that they want to talk to people who are like them and it's so hard coming into Healthcare you like from my background and you know I'm you know a white male and there are people who are like me but my parents were poor and were bluecollar and then now I'm in this executive field and learning how to interact with people even with less barriers than some of my my peers have uh so that's incredible that you offer that service I think that's excellent so one of the important questions too that a lot of students are wondering is who is going to be helping them throughout the program who are the preceptors going to be do you have a whole team or is this just one or two people what does that look like for you yeah so over really probably the past year we've been developing um a full team of leaders who are over the fellowship program um we used to be in that typical model where you had a sponsor and preceptor um which was they were always very supportive and involved with the fellowship but we know that kind of as healthc care environment changes it's better to get as many leaders involved from different areas to help support the fellow so what we ended up implementing was an executive team and an advisor team so our executive team is made up of our um CEO of the hospital um our Executive Vice President of ambulatory our Executive Vice President of Operations clinical operations and our Chief leadership development officer so we really wanted to tie in all those things so that the fellow could see ambulatory operations Hospital operations and have um leadership development along the way and we found that just having more people invested in the success of the fellow is always good um so we have that executive team in place and then we have the fellowship advisers which are myself and uh Frank sortino who also had been AOW in the past and is now at the AP level um in his career um so trying to get people that have been fellows before are at different career level points um that have experienced them this themselves so that they have a good input and can build a good relationship with the fellows to keep developing them um and even one of our executive um team leaders Jordan Damas he actually was a fellow as well but I think he's about 15 years or more out from his his program as well so that has been the nice thing about UAB we have a fellowship program that's about 20 years old so people are kind of throughout the organization that have been in fellowships or worked with fellows so the program is very well known within the system so it's very easy for um for the fellows to get involved quickly because people know what a fellow is oh I really appreciate you joining me I think this is an incredible program we're going to have all the information of course linked down below the video and on the review on our website uh we're building one of the largest Fellowship indexes and this video is going to be on there I really appreciate your time and telling us all about this excellent program and I'm sure we're going to be hearing from a few other previous fellas from the University of Alabama as well thank you for having me</p>