Key Takeaways
- Organizations should actively recruit clinicians into administrative roles to leverage their frontline insights in bridging the communication gap between leadership and providers.
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In today’s rapidly shifting healthcare landscape, administrative fellowships are more than just a springboard for rising leaders—they’re incubators for new ideas, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the transformation of care delivery itself. Nowhere is this more evident than at the Delaware Valley Accountable Care Organization (ACO), where the next generation of healthcare administrators are getting hands-on experience in value-based care. In a recent episode of The American Journal of Healthcare Strategy podcast, Rachael Smith, MHA, RD, offered a candid look at her journey from bedside dietitian in a cardiac ICU to administrative fellow at the Delaware Valley ACO, sharing hard-won lessons, surprising challenges, and actionable insights for those considering a similar path.
Smith’s story is emblematic of a broader trend: clinically trained professionals increasingly stepping into administrative roles to bridge the gap between patient care and system leadership. Her reflections illuminate not just the value of diverse experience, but the urgent need for healthcare organizations to foster mentorship, welcome nontraditional candidates, and prepare for a value-driven future.
What drives a clinician to leave patient care for administration? For Rachael Smith, the decision was rooted in a desire for impact—and a realization that her clinical vantage point, rather than being a disadvantage, could become her superpower.
"When I made the decision to go back to grad school and I had all of this clinical experience, my perspective was that I would be starting from behind," she recalls. "I thought having mostly a clinical background would actually hinder me. Really quickly I learned...that may not be the case."
Smith credits the faculty at Penn State for reframing her narrative: rather than seeing herself as lacking, she learned to position her clinical background as an asset. Her advice for other clinicians considering the leap?
Recognize that clinical experience provides unique insight into patient needs and system gaps.
Seek out programs and mentors who value your background, not just your potential.
"It can really be an advantage and it really kind of uniquely sets you up for a career in administration."
Smith’s journey echoes a national need: healthcare systems benefit when clinicians are part of the decision-making fabric. Yet, as she notes, not all clinical professions encourage or support this transition equally—a gap that educational and organizational leaders must address.
How can educational institutions help clinicians become leaders? According to Smith, the culture and support systems of graduate programs are critical.
"I think something that we can do as leaders...is just in the clinical space really encourage people to get that formal management leadership education," she notes, contrasting her own experience as a dietitian with that of nurses. Nursing, she observes, has a well-worn pathway for clinicians to step into leadership and administration, often embedded in their training and visible in hospital hierarchies. Not so for dietitians, physical therapists, or other allied health professionals.
Smith’s experience at Penn State’s MHA program proved pivotal:
Faculty took a personal interest in students’ holistic well-being and career trajectory.
Cohorts included diverse early- to mid-career professionals, each valued for their unique perspective.
Leadership training was explicit, intentional, and integrated from day one.
"From day one, they were thinking about how to uniquely position me in the field while also taking an interest in my emotional and educational health and well-being throughout the entire program," Smith recalls.
Key takeaways for educational leaders:
Make leadership pathways visible and accessible for all clinical backgrounds, not just nursing.
Integrate mentorship and career coaching into curricula.
Value prior clinical experience as a differentiator, not a deficiency.
What drew Smith to value-based care and the Delaware Valley ACO? Her answer is both personal and systemic.
"I really do just feel in my bones that [value-based care] is where the industry is headed...I was surprised that there was so little discussion of value-based care in my graduate degree program and I just felt like I had so much more to learn."
Smith’s motivations for choosing the Delaware Valley ACO Fellowship included:
A strong belief in value-based care: She saw firsthand, in clinical settings, the limitations of fee-for-service and the potential of models focused on outcomes and prevention.
A desire for practical, on-the-ground learning: The ACO’s administrative fellowship provided a rare opportunity to be embedded in an organization making this transition real.
A steep, rewarding learning curve: "Everyone at the Delaware Valley ACO in the very beginning—whether it's a fellow or a new mid or senior-level manager—describes it as drinking from the fire hose," she laughs. "It's just a lot of information, a lot of new language."
Smith boils it down: "We at the Delaware Valley ACO are one of the players trying to shift the industry from paying for volume to paying for value. We do that by just focusing on the patients in our network...keeping them healthy, keeping them out of the hospital, promoting their health to the best of our ability, and making sure that payment structures are set up so that we are paying their providers for the quality of care that they provide, rather than the volume."
For executive readers, the Delaware Valley ACO’s approach involves:
Health outreach and preventative care
Data-driven population health management
Provider incentives aligned to outcomes, not procedures
Reducing costly, high-acuity interventions by investing upstream
How does clinical experience translate into administrative effectiveness? Smith is unequivocal: "My clinical experience has been invaluable when it comes to even the work that I'm doing now."
She breaks down why:
Clinicians-turned-administrators can speak the language of frontline staff, building trust and understanding.
They bridge the communication gap between administration and clinical teams—crucial in implementing value-based care initiatives.
They bring a ground-level perspective to policy and process change.
"I feel like I have a certain level of skill when it comes to connecting with clinical stakeholders because at one point I was a clinical stakeholder," she says. "I can communicate certain needs that we have in the ACO to clinical staff because at one point I was a clinical staff member who was being told that I needed to do things that I didn't understand why I had to do them."
This dual fluency is vital as healthcare organizations pivot toward population health and integrated care models.
Is value-based care the future—or just a fad? Smith is realistic but hopeful.
"I would consider myself a hesitant optimist," she says. "I wouldn't say that value-based care is going to completely take over fee-for-service, at least not in my lifetime. There will always be those patients...and providers who prefer the fee-for-service model."
But Smith’s vision is clear: "What I hope to see in my professional career before I retire is just that value-based care becomes more mainstream...I wish providers especially understood the benefits of it for both the health of a population and also just the health of individuals."
For executives charting strategy:
Don’t expect a complete replacement of fee-for-service, but prepare for increasing hybridization.
Invest in education and outreach to ensure all stakeholders understand the benefits and mechanics of value-based models.
Recognize the transition as cultural, not just contractual.
How can new grads break into value-based care or secure a fellowship like Smith’s? Her guidance is concrete and refreshingly actionable.
"Just learn as much as you possibly can about all of the different ways things are done," she urges. "Even though I fully believe that value-based care is where we're headed...I'm still every day trying to learn all of the different small niches in fee-for-service medicine."
Top recommendations from Smith:
Diversify your knowledge. Don’t pigeonhole yourself—know both traditional and emerging models.
Reach out proactively. "Cold call, cold call, cold call...now lucky for us it's cold emailing not cold calling. But on those early days of my degree, I was cold emailing any person who I thought had a job title that I thought sounded interesting...nine times out of ten they would say yes."
Leverage networking for opportunity. One cold email led to a capstone project sponsor and a long-term mentor—proof that initiative pays off.
For graduate programs and employers, Smith’s story highlights the value of practical experience, diverse networks, and visible mentorship.
How can organizations make themselves more attractive to top early-career talent? Smith highlights two priorities:
Flexible work arrangements. Remote or hybrid work isn’t just a perk; it’s a skillset many gained during COVID and want to continue leveraging.
Formal, well-structured mentorship programs. "If I were to interview with a company and they told me that they have formal mentorship—like structured mentorship programming—where they really invest in their young talent...that would be a huge gold star to me."
This isn’t just window dressing. Smith notes that structured mentorship, especially for women and people of color, signals a genuine commitment to talent development and organizational diversity. It helps early-career professionals ask hard, career-defining questions and navigate their trajectory with support.
The future of healthcare leadership lies at the intersection of clinical expertise and administrative vision. Rachael Smith’s story underscores that the most effective administrators are those who understand both the patient and the system, who aren’t afraid to keep learning, and who seek out opportunities to connect, mentor, and lead. As value-based care becomes more central to U.S. healthcare, organizations must prioritize not just technical skills, but the lived experience and adaptability that come from diverse, nontraditional backgrounds.
Actionable insight:
If you’re a healthcare organization, invest in pathways for clinicians to step into leadership. Build formal mentorship programs. Foster a culture where cold emails and bold questions are welcomed. And if you’re a clinician or early-career professional, don’t be afraid to reach across the aisle, ask for a seat at the table, and make your unique experience the cornerstone of your leadership journey.
As Smith puts it: "I always love an opportunity to talk about the industry and value-based care...I was more than happy to do it." Let’s make space for more voices like hers—our healthcare future depends on it.
<p>[Music] hello everyone this is Cole Lions again coming from the American Journal of Health Care strategy and here with me is Rachel Smith Rachel why don't you share a bit about yourself yeah um so my name is Rachel Smith um I'm currently located in Philadelphia Pennsylvania I am a dietitian by training um I got my bachelor's degree at Lal University where I you know pursued a bachelor's degree in nutrition I fully was on the track to be a registered dietitian um I did that for a few years starting my career in the cardiac ICU um I had a kind of slew of experiences in that position that I'm sure we're going to get into today um and then I went back to get my Master's Degree at Penn State in healthcare administration just kind of deciding that I you know after having those experiences I wanted to learn as much as possible about the industry um there I learned about um you know valy based care acos population health and so many different light bulbs went off in my head and while I was there I decided to pursue um an administrative Fellowship within value based care and I ended up at the Delaware Valley ACO um where I'm about three quarters of the way through my administrative Fellowship nice you've had a really Incredible Journey and I think it's also a really unique one and you're probably going to have a lot of perspectives that you'll be able to share on maybe how we can improve education and improve health care from a lot of different areas what I want to kind of understand first is what led you to take that you know it's a lot of hard work to go back to grad school and it costs money to go back to grad school but there's always that opportunity cost of well as well of switching from a career you already had connections and experience in to then going to Administration so what kind of LED you to make that decision so I'll I'll kind of start off by saying when I was when I was switching when when I made the decision to go back to grad school and I had all of this clinical um experience my perspective was that I would be kind of starting from behind I thought I would I was working from a disadvantage having clinical experience rather than you know a lot of people who I already knew were mha programs who had bachelor's degrees in healthcare administration I thought having mostly a clinical background would actually hinder me um really quickly I learned that you know through a lot of encouragement from my um from The Faculty at Penn State that that may not be the case and it really all had to it it really all came down to how I positioned myself in the in the field so one thing I would say to anyone thinking about going back to school after they've already started a clinical career is that it can really be an advantage and it really kind of uniquely um sets you up for a career in administration so all of that to say um I had all always oh sorry go ahead no no sorry I was gonna say you know one of the things that that comes to mind is we need more people in you know coming from Clinical Specialties to be in administration how do you think as Educators at institutions like Penn State you know they did a great job at making you feel welcome how do you think other institutions could do that you know how can we make clinical professionals feel more welcome I think anyone who has worked in especially you know a large health system has seen that kind of phenomenon where we you know have really really high-performing clinical professionals that are really great at their clinical roles and then they get promoted into these leadership management Administration careers and for some people that is a really great fit they are natural-born leaders they have really great management talent but maybe they haven't had the training to really succeed in those roles and you know I that didn't happen for me so I don't know what the outcome for me in that situation would have been but I think something that we can do as Leaders is just in the clinical space really encourage people to get that formal management leadership education and something that was a little bit different for me as a dietitian that I'm not sure is present in say nursing for example I think in the nursing profession something that they do really well is encourage nurses to go back to school participate in these administrative functions get leadership training I see it all the time I have tons of colleagues who are nurses I have tons of career role models who started their their careers as you know nurses physical therapists occupational therapists Etc who they they got a lot of encouragement early in their clinical careers to take on these administrative tasks or roles to be able to build those to kind of build that skill set I didn't feel that way in my early career there weren't a ton of opportunities to take on administrative roles or leadership opportunities in my experience there was kind of a team of clinical staff and then one administrator for that whole team and that that was kind of it that was the leadership structure so there wasn't a whole lot of upward mobility within that structure and from conversations that I've had with colleagues during that time that seemed to be the case across the industry I can't speak for the industry you know Nationwide but at least in the other settings that you know I have colleagues in that seemed to be a pretty common experience so I had always you know planned to go back to grad school and when I had experienced this type of limit to Upward mobility and not a lot of opportunity to improve those leadership and management skills I a and you know wanting to learn as much as I could about the healthcare industry because you know it just being in it as a clinical person I still had so many questions it was still so overwhelming and complicated to me um it seemed like nmha was was the perfect fit I think when you think about it it makes sense because a lot of the msns and especially like the um the dnp programs for nurses they have a leadership component and some of them are like entirely leadership focused do they I don't think a lot of the Masters in you know in uh what is it dietetic uh what's it called uh yeah dietetics is great yeah yeah the masters programs for yeah they don't necessarily have a leadership component to them right so I did not get my Master's in nutrition that is an like an industry standard now so I believe the in 2024 or 2023 it is a requirement but when I graduated in 2019 it wasn't and still the requirement is that you need to have a master's in something it does not have to be a master's in um uh in nutrition to be a registered dietitian um but just to keep up with industry Trends myself and and a lot of my colleagues were you know going to get our master's degree just to be able to stay competitive in the market right so um but you're you're completely right there in my bachelor's degree there was not a you know a focus on that where I know a lot of undergraduate nursing programs there there is and and just visibility right when you're in um a large hospital system there are senior and upper level management who all have RNs behind their names right so it's very visible that a lot of leadership comes from RNs who have worked at that hospital and on the floors of those hospitals for um years and years and that's just not something that was really present or that that I had scene was present with um dietitians yeah that makes a lot of sense I I think that can be a challenge too for Physicians as well where I think often they're taught to manage Physicians but they're not always taught how to manage different clinical staff whereas if you're a nurse sometimes as a nurse you're helping to manage the younger Physicians you're helping to manage the you know janitorial staff the the maintenance staff you're kind of helping to manage a lot of these areas and you have to be skilled in that but then everyone else doesn't always get that and so that makes a lot of sense on why that mha would be valuable but I guess what I'm wondering as well is you know why you know what what about you was attracted to actually being in leadership aside from you know I guess sometimes clinical staff dislikes Administration they dislike leadership and as there are know a little worried about kind of joining that that kind of group of Administrators but you kind of had approached it with a very different mentality and I'm wondering were there any leaders that you saw or any opportunities that you saw where you were actually really attracted to leadership and you saw it as an Avenue where you could help patients even more yeah so early on in my career I there there were a lot of leaders that I saw who were really inspiring to me who are doing really really great work to just kind of improve the lives of patients so so on one hand that that kind of motivated me on the other hand um just being kind of a staff dietician um not having a huge span of influence there were a lot of problems that I were seeing for patients right I mentioned that I was working in the cardiac ICU there were a lot of services and things that I knew about both from my education and from you know other colleagues in the field that you know there were things out there that I knew existed could help patients that didn't exist in the setting that I was working at so I was kind of spinning my wheels trying to get these programs created or new workflows created to better help patients but having such a limited span of control that I had it was really really difficult and so that kind of motivated me to not just try to amass more seniority or more influence for myself but also reach out to other leaders in the organization to try to help me understand the kind of how the system worked so I could get these programs better working for patients and then once I realized how the whole system works or how complicated it was you know it's it's a system that I care a lot about for a lot of reasons that's a whole other conversation but um Healthcare being a system that I care so much about whenever I care so much about something I kind of want to get in and help as much as possible and the position that I I was in I I didn't feel like I had a capacity to help as much as I knew that I could so when I was communicating with all of these different leaders who could help me with these program programs I was really inspired by all of the work that they were doing but I also wanted to get to a place in my professional career where I was similar to them and was able to kind of enact these programs try to take down barriers and we we were just as dietitians trying to do the best that we could for our patients and if there wasn't someone at the at the management level like kind of listening to us and helping take away barriers there really wasn't a whole lot we could do so I was thinking you know look at these leaders who are doing a great job try to duplicate what they're doing but also get yourself in a professional capacity to where you're able to do those things and I think you know that that's a humongous motivation I think that goes along with what you were saying earlier on why you chose to go in this direction and so with that kind of humongous motivation why did you choose Penn State what was the reason for going with their mha program amongst you know a lot of the others in our region so um there's a lot of different uh answers to that and I alluded to it in the written responses to the questions that I submitted earlier but I am born and raised from central Pennsylvania I so part of it was you know they were very Forefront on my radar I grew up going to Penn State games when I was a kid um my mom is a very proud Penn State Alum so you know that was one reason that that that they were kind of on my list uh but there there were a bunch of UN ities on my list uh a bunch of different programs that I was looking at but the reason why I ended up choosing Penn State and why I really kind of went after that program um really solidified for me the first time I met the program director Dr Chris Caulkins he is just an incredible human being and the first time that I met with him and his his uh colleague aen gy who is again just wonderful it just came across so clearly in that first meeting how much they truly care about every single student holistically they care about the well-being of every single student both in the classroom and also in their careers so most of my cohort were early to midcareer professionals and like I had mentioned before they took the time to really understand where each student was in their career and how that career experience made them a unique part of the cohort who had a you know a unique set of experiences to offer the industry so I wasn't just someone pursuing an mha Pro an mha degree I was you know someone who already had a degree in nutrition has a really unique background had done three years in a cardiac ICU as a dietitian you know I I'm I'm coming from this unique background and they from day one were thinking about how to uniquely position me in the field while also taking an interest in my emotional and you know educational health and well-being throughout the entire program and how I would fit into the cohort as well and that just you know very clearly came across in that very first meeting and ever since then I was like okay this is this is where I want to be this is where I want to spend the next three years these are the people that I want to spend the next three years with um and it was very clear from that first meeting yeah that's great it's it's you can always tell I mean that's one of the reasons why I've stayed with Jefferson because you know I've just met people that have really motivated me and that I've wanted to to stay with and so I understand that feeling for sure I think one of the questions as well is you know you've gone through this mha program at Penn State would you go back and change anything about your under grad experience or your major um I have to think about that one I think I think if there was one thing I could go back and change about my undergrad experience I wouldn't have changed you know the outcome because like I said I think it makes me um you know it it kind of makes me a unique it puts me in a a unique position in the field right and I do want to just explain a little bit about what that education entailed so to be a registered dietitian you have to go through three different kind of sections of the degree um one of them being Food Service management one of them being clinical so you have to understand how to you know treat different conditions with nutrition and then one of them being uh community and Community nutrition is what always kind of attracted me the most and that's where I first learned about social determinance of Health the social ecological model things like that how health systems and governments and you know even the family structure really work together and that's kind of where I learned that I cared so much about population Health before I knew to call it population health I didn't learn that term for for a while but that's that's when all of that that sort of language and those Concepts really started speaking to me um so if I didn't have that basis and that background when I got to grad school and learned about acos and value based care and population health I'm not sure I would have had the language or the knowledge to pursue that and also like I said my my clinical experience has been invaluable when it comes to even the work that I'm doing now so in in my um kind of day-to-day with the ACO I work a lot with our um clinical strategies team with our quality team um with our patient trans or our practice transformation team um and I would not be able to do the work that I do at the level that I do if it weren't for those experiences in a patient care environment and we had talked a little bit earlier about that kind of Disconnect between clinical staff and administration and how important is for those two groups to really understand each other and that is done the best when each group has a little bit of experience in the other group right so I feel like I have a certain level of skill when it comes to connecting with clinical stakeholders because at one point I was a clinical stakeholder I feel like I can communicate um certain needs that we have in the ACO to clinical staff because at one point I was a clinical staff member who was being told that I needed to do things that I didn't understand why I had to do them so I I feel like I can speak that language a little bit better than someone who didn't have any clinical experience so I see my path as a little bit a little a little bit curvy and windy um but I'm not sure I would have done it any different I think uh you and I are both really invested in value-based care and that's one of the areas where there's sometimes the biggest like disconnect because we're kind of Shifting the value preposition it might appear initially away from direct patient care um even though in reality we're actually trying to improve patient care but sometimes there's that communication disconnect where you know the clinical staff will feel like they're being hamstrung in some ways they're not able to do what they used to do and then sometimes the administrative staff is under extreme pressure but once everyone's able to communicate everyone realizes that it's really just trying to do its best for the patients what was going into that program with the delare valley ACO like because I assume that you know you probably already knew a good bit about value based care but you know I'm familiar with the delare valley ACO but I actually don't know everything that they do so what was that like was there a huge learning curve you know what did you learn and if you could explain to all of us what the Delaware Valle Delaware Valley excuse me ACO does I'd love to hear about it yeah so there was definitely a huge learning curve um when I joined the organization and I still feel like I'm learning every single day the reason why I pursued the ACO is and a fellowship in general is because in my graduate program I felt like there wasn't enough education on value based care um and population Health in general and I really do just feel in my bones that that is where the industry is headed for a lot of different reasons that again could be a whole separate conversation but I really do feel like that's where the industry is headed and because I feel that way I was surprised that there was so little discussion of value based care in my graduate degree program and I just felt like I had so much more to learn so I was looking for administrative fellowships in value based care I was lucky enough to secure one of the very few fellowships in value based Care at the Delaware Valley ACO and very much from the beginning posture was just learn and you know absorb as much as physically possible and at the at the very beginning I was lucky enough to attend the Jefferson like population Health Booth Camp which was so incredibly educational and I had met a former CEO of Delaware Valley ACO and he had said to me you know I think you know with your background I think you're going to have a pretty smooth transition um you know compared to other fellows and that had me feeling really good about myself so I you know was like okay like this won't be too bad I won't be too in over my head I'll be okay and I was wrong I was very overwhelmed it was a lot of learning it was a huge learning curve everyone at the Delaware Valley ACO in the very beginning whether it's a fellow or a new MID or senior level manager describes it as is drinking from the fire hose in the very beginning it's just a lot of information a not lot of new language so it yeah it's just a lot and I'm still learning every single day and just the way the organization is structured and our different priorities is just still something that I'm I'm learning every single day but the way I like to describe it to uh my friends and family when they ask me what I'm doing is really just that we at the Delaware Valley ACO or one of the players trying to shift the industry from paying for volume to paying for Value that's that's really what we're doing in in the clinical space and we do that by just focusing on the patients in our Network so by trying to avoid changing the entire industry overnight we have the patients in our Network and we are just focused on keeping them healthy keeping them out of the hospital promoting their health to the best of our ability and making sure that payment structures are set up so that we are paying their providers for the quality of care that they provide rather than the volume and also trying to decrease the amount of Health Care volume that the patients need so that's by doing you know Health Outreach making sure that they are all seeing their preventative care physicians as much as possible like their primary care physician you know thing things of that nature but we're essentially just trying to use Innovative payment structures and keeping patients healthy so they don't have to access you know traumatic forms of Health Care like an emergency room visit or costly forms of Health Care also like an emergency room visit but that's that's really what we're trying to do and there's a whole lot of ways to do that but um that's the long and short it yeah that's that's very inspiring work and I love that work as well and I've had a similar experience with you know I was doing Outreach for population health and then I went over to the payer side because every you know my mentors were telling me you know move over to the pair side you know you're it's not going to be too challenging you're going to do great because you've already been doing good without reach and then all of a sudden like each plan has a book you know like a 100 page book that you gotta kind of understand there all these nuances and you know very unexpected but it's you know that gaining of knowledge that's really rewarding you know you already alluded to it that you really think value based care is where things are going you know right now we're in this position with it where people are kind of saying it's going to overtake you know fully overtake fee for service that it's going to transform everything and then other people say it's just going to you know come around be here for a little while until something else comes out in terms of the payment models what kind of place are you in with that I would consider myself I guess a hesitant Optimist I wouldn't say that value based care is going to completely take over fee for service at least you know not in my lifetime um there will always be those patients who because of their like position in society their socioeconomic status their particular Health needs who prefer the feif for service model and profi providers who prefer the feif for service model and that that's right for them what I hope to see in my you know professional career before I retire is just that value based care becomes more you mainstream I find myself constantly having to describe what value based care is and what population health is and what the benefits of it are both to healthcare consumers and Healthcare Providers and I wish that wasn't the case I wish providers especially understood the benefits of it for both the health of a population and also just the health of individuals that's where that I I wish we could get to I'm not going to go so far as to say that it will become the new normal but I do I am optimistic that it will become more mainstream um but I I don't see fif for service ever going away but I think it will be beneficial really for the health of our nation that value-based care becomes more mainstream and more just understood by the general public of healthcare consumers and providers definitely I'm I'm in the same camp I think you know I hope that it really goes far and I hope that eventually it becomes kind of the standard I actually am even a bit more probably zealous for it I think that you know feed for service can really kind of go to the Wayside especially if we don't want nationalized health care we need to have a a method that changes the way things are paid for I wanted to kind of leave off with maybe some recommendations that you'd have for grad students you know you've been so success you know you know your mentors are are kind of praising you you know so what would you recommend new graduate students or people who are just ending their graduate program so that they can have a really successful career like yourself I will say also you know to to your last point about graduate programs and doctoral programs in population Health one of the things that I think was helpful to me pursuing a masters of healthcare administration which was so Broad and then pursuing a career in population Health was that it's not enough just to be an expert in population Health you really just have to have motivation and a drive to understand as much as possible about the industry as a whole and that was that was something that was part of my motivation to pursue an mha to begin with I didn't want to you know I I thought about a lot of different degree programs and I didn't I didn't want to pigeonhole myself but more than that I really just wanted to learn as much as possible about the industry as I could and while I think you know programs specific to population Health are incredible and Advance you know the the discipline and in the field of study I do think it's important to know as much as you can about the traditional way things are done because that that'll also help us Advance population health and value based care as well so that would be a recommendation that I have for recent graduates as well just learn as much as you possibly can about all of the different ways things are done and you know even though I fully believe that value based care is where we're where we're headed as a nation I am still every day trying to learn all of the different small niches in FIFA service medicine and how the industry is working now because I think that's going to help us in population Health have those conversations when we're trying to change minds and change attitudes um and all and all that good stuff so so that would be one recommendation and that was definitely part of my um motivation to to pursue an mha but I also fully believe and this was really good advice that I got from one of my professors at Penn State who now teaches at the University of Kentucky and their MH ha program and she said I I you know when I was early on in my um master's degree I was I was getting really antsy so I was getting all of this really good education all of this knowledge but I was in this job where I couldn't really apply a lot of it there was just not a lot of room for me to take what I was learning in the classroom and apply it in my current role so I just felt like I I had all of these things to do but I didn't have a lot of place to do them and she gave me the um advice to just start cold calling and this was some of the best advice I've ever given and so many people who are watching this interview right now are probably rolling their eyes but it's something that I really firmly believe in cold call cold call cold call and now lucky for us it's cold emailing not cold calling but on in in those early days of my degree I was cold emailing any person who I thought had a a job title that I thought sounded interesting and I would say you know I am in my second year of grad school I'm pursuing this degree I think the work that you do sounds really interesting can I have 30 minutes of your time and nine times out of 10 they would say yes and then we'd have a a 30 minute Zoom call one woman that I I cold emailed we ended up working together for the next two years she sponsored my um cstone project we are still in communication to this day she's a really good friend and colleague of mine she's wonderful worst case scenario you just have a really fun conversation and you can kind of picture yourself in the future doing something really interesting so it it just can open so many doors for you I do it in my current job I you know will just cold email people on LinkedIn or in you know the company that I work for just just to learn about what they do and then they might introduce you to someone else and it just kind of goes on from there I that partially introduced me to the dvaco fellowship because I cold emailed the former fellow so it just it can be really inspiring just for yourself to feel a little bit better about where you are um either in your career or in your educational journey and it can also um open a lot of doors for you so I just it I can't say enough good things about it um and a few weeks ago my um boss and mentor and the um director of the fellowship program that I'm in actually gave me the exact same advice so two very important people in my educational and career Journey have given me the same advice so I I think that probably means it's pretty good advice so I'm passing it on to everyone else I think it's excellent advice and I actually attribute it to the only reason I'm in you know kind of the role I'm in now is I cold called people about the role I you know I had met with a lot of the people at Jefferson health plans because I you know wanted to learn about what it's like over there and you know so it's I think it's an excellent method especially if people are struggling to find mentors it you just start sending LinkedIn invites start sending emails and a lot of people are like really really excited to share their advice so it's it's great to see one of the questions that I have I think that's really important is you know you're coming out of a good mha program you're coming out of a fellowship you're a really valuable candidate with lots of knowledge but sometimes these programs or these companies rather struggle to recruit people like yourself what is something that you know hiring candidates like yourself that companies could attract you to work for them that could make the work experience better and the company more attractive for you so you know of course there are all of the the check boxes that people look for when they're looking for a new position and those those checkboxes are are important and you know remote work comes to mind flexibility with um remote or hybrid working and I bring that up not because it's just like a nice to have but also because a lot of us like myself had some experience with learning or working during covid so not only did we get used to that because it was just a nice thing to have but we also had to really develop skills to be able to do that right so it it took some Growing Pains to be able to work or learn remotely and now we have skills to be able to do that which are are not things that we want to have you know falter or no longer have those skills so that's one thing but even more than that I think something that organizations can do to go above and beyond in attracting new Talent is having formal like well structured mentorship programs and I think there really is a a desire among people in in my age group especially for young women and young people of color is having someone that they can go to who has similar experiences to them someone who looks like them who's maybe a little bit further ahead in their career that they can go to to ask harder maybe more uncomfortable questions but also just you know ask very very blunt questions about their career trajectory and that's not always something that you can ask of a coworker who's maybe up here to to you or your boss right and I and that can be a difficult thing to kind of forge on your own I think it's an important skill for especially mha grads to have to be able to make those connections on their own and Forge kind of more informal mentorship um relationships so don't don't get me wrong that is definitely something that you should be able to do on your own um but if I were to you know interview with a company and they told me that they have formal mentorship like structured mentorship programming where they really invest in their young talent and they help you find a mentor and that's something that they really believed in as a company that would be a huge gold star to me that would tell me that they really care about their younger talent and that they care about those relationships within their Workforce and that they care you know explicitly about their you know employees of color and their young women who are who are um employed so that that's something that's you know not monetary that I think really goes above and beyond um because like I said that's a skill that everyone should sort of have but it's just such kind of like a weight off your back when it's not when it when it's something that's kind of already done for you and it's something that I know a lot of HR professionals like and are really good at setting up set up at Jefferson health plans we have the um Rise Up program and we also have Leading Edge leader but then at Jefferson Health they don't really have that and you can really tell the difference in kind of how a lot and there's a lot of reasons why Jefferson Health doesn't do that at the moment I'm not saying anything bad about Jefferson Health but the the difference is pretty you know can see it because you're able to connect with a Executive Vice President or somebody in the sea suite and actually really ask them questions whereas otherwise it's kind of you feel a little bit more isolated and like you said sometimes we need to ask you know blunt questions to people and it's hard to ask that to your peers well thank you so much Rachel for joining us today you provided some really amazing insights and I'm sure everyone's going to really be able to to glean a lot from this I I can't be more appreciative for you taking your lunch hour here to come and join us of course thank you so much for having me this was a really just you know fulfilling conversation I was glad to be able to do it and I you know I always love an opportunity to talk about the industry and value based care and my time at Penn State so I yeah was more than happy to do it I'm sure we'll be having you back to talk more in depth about value based care and hopefully I'll be able to get kind of a few different people with different opinions on we can all have a good discussion um so we'll definitely be seeing more of you down the road all right</p>
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