<p>hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy and I'm joined this evening by a special guest Ravi Ravi please introduce yourself hi everyone my name is Robbie Singh I am an administrative fellow at Dana Farber up here in Boston and I'm very excited to be here [Music] today we're so excited to have you Dana Farber is a really well-known institution and I think a lot of people will be interested what their Fellowship is like and you've also had a lot of other interesting experiences as well starting all the way back at the University of South Florida where you got both an mha and an mph I have to ask what was the reason for getting both those degrees and what got you interested in healthcare administration yeah absolutely well I guess the real answer starts a little bit further back when I did my under I got have a bachelor's in biology I was in Premed I thought you know what's a good way to kind of help my GPA chemistry was really hard uh so I did what any normal child does and I took uh Financial Accounting I realized that you know I kind of really like doing business classes I continued throughout the four years I was there and when I graduated I actually had four minors in uh business and a bachelor's in biology and so at the same point in time I was thinking thinking do I really want to go to medical school do I you know really want to do business and I kind of found the masters of Public Health I concentrated in uh Health policies and programs and so I thought it was a really great blend of really my passion for business and my love of healthcare so I applied to the University of South Florida I got in for that specific concentration and while I was there I learned that there is something else called the masters of Health Administration which was an even bigger blend of my passion for healthcare and for business and so really combining those two uh I had you know learned so much about public health and the health disparities that affect so many people around the world that I just thought it was so meaningful to have that degree as well and really be able to incorporate things I learned there with my practice in uh the business of healthcare nice that is excellent I I want to ask I'm getting my NBA right now and I've always been a huge fan of mph uh degrees and programs and and so I was thinking of doing an mph as well is that something that you would recommend do you think that extra knowledge has been really useful for you I definitely think so I think definitely everyone should learn about the social disparities of Health that exist within our country through my mph I also learned a lot about foreign systems of healthcare so I think it's very important knowledge internationally but also nationally so if that's something you're very interested in if you want to focus on accessibility and uh quality of care and really Health outcomes of different populations it would be very beneficial to get nice yeah because I I have been really considering it so that's that's one of the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you're having these two degrees and you're going down this you know business path here and so you've had quite a few different roles in a few different organizations it looks like one of your first internships was at Broward Health uh was that during your undergrad or your grad school and and was it challenging to get that internship what was the process like so that was actually during grad school so because I did the two degrees instead of doing the traditional two years for the Masters I did three and part of our program was actually to have an internship uh I went to school in Tampa Florida but I am from Fort lale and so Broward Health is the kind of Health Institute from where I grew up and so when I was applying for internships I I did the same thing that a lot of my peers did I looked in the Tampa area there was so many opportunities and then I heard about the internship at Broward Health and I kind of thought you know if this is a way that I could go home for this summer I can spend time with my family but I can also work in the community that I grew up in and that you know I've seen this big name everywhere might as well you know throw my hat in the ring and so uh the application process was pretty average it was similar to a lot of the application process processes so Broward Health has a very long established internship program uh they had maybe about 30 interns the year I was there and it was run by their uh Chief Operating Officer so their internship program was quite robust they take a lot of interns from undergrad and grad school and then they kind of place you in the interest area of your choice and also an area of need within the Institute so it's very cool opportunity what was your uh area of Interest so I was really interested in like the corporate side of Broward Health so Broward Health is um a corporate system with four main hospitals I also was really interested in like really nerdy of me in compliance so I wanted to learn the legality of you know Healthcare what's the law involved you hear about so many different institutions that have you know run into trouble with the law or have different uh interactions with you know Hippa anti Kickback Stark law and so I really wanted to know what was the intersectionality between Healthcare business and you know the actual government side of healthcare so I thought that was a phenomenal place for me to be placed in did you ever consider going to law school or having a career in compliance I definitely did think about going to law school while I was doing the internship I also realized that that was three more years of school after just doing another three years of school so you know it's not off the table but it's potentially a back burner idea interesting a lot of preds they think about going to med school they don't do that right away sometimes they consider law school sometimes they consider getting a drph or a PhD it just it does seem kind of like an interesting pattern with preds I was Premed as well myself so I always like to ask what people's you know long-term as aspirations are because I always find that they're quite education intensive after that you did the finance intern at the AC not a lot of people know about the AC and and or they know about the AC but they don't know about their internships so how did you find that internship and what was it like yeah so there are many chapters of AC around the country in Tampa Florida where the University of South Florida is it's the western Florida Chapter and so while I was a student I was kind of looking for opportunities to do something different now that I had done a lot of compliance during my actual like school internship I realized you know we're learning all this about Finance I've learned like financial accounting and managerial accounting in undergrad but I don't feel like I actually know how to apply that knowledge so one of my mentors was actually very involved in the the chapter of ACD and he was a professor in our school so I had asked him you know I really want to do something more with this you know knowledge that I've learned in in school in theory and really kind of apply it somewhere so he um connected me with the the Regent and the president of AC western Florida Chapter and they had these two internships so they had a programming and events intern and a finance intern and so I I thought it'd be a great fit if I was able to apply so I did and I spent a year with them actually help working very closely with their treasure and doing kind of all of the finance and budgeting for that chapter which you know that all the in person of events happen all the like membership dues come in I don't know if everyone knows this but AC uh actually gets money from the national chapter to fund the local chapters and vice versa so it was a very cool mix of you know funds flowing in and out of the organization but also having to kind of budget and plan for the events that they do throw annually so it was a very interesting internship I learned a lot and it's a important skill to have I was was talking with the COO of um Temple and he said you know the two things you got to have to run a hospital you got to have that you know really good leadership but you got to have budgeting he because you got to know how to do Finance got to know how to make a balanced budget because it's going to be throughout your whole career and he said to me said if you can balance a $500 budget you can balance a $500 million budget and I said okay so I still haven't cracked that piece yet uh I haven't really cracked either but I'm working on it so I think that was a really good good internship to have one thing I noticed that it looked like you were doing between you know over all these internships is being a research assistant at mafit Cancer Center why were you you know a research assistant there and do you have a personal connection with with cancer you know where did you get that research assistantship what was that about absolutely so I do have a personal connection with cancer um that's something that's very near and dear to our family's heart um we have always kind of donated and been involved with breast cancer awareness um my mother and my great-grandmother both uh had breast cancer my mother is very healthy now so we're very excited about that but while I was at mafit and growing up we did a lot of fundraising we did a lot of you know events with breast cancer survivors and we volunteered in a lot of the uh hospitals and like the Cancer Care Clinics and things like that so when I got to the University of South Florida mafit Cancer Center is actually located in the heart of their University so one of my first projects I remember was we had to do a business plan and we had to base it off of a of an institution and I had picked MAF and part of our business plan was to um actually go to the you know company organization that we had Chosen and interview someone who is in a senior leaders uh leadership position so I had gone and I met with their I believe her title was the director of population Sciences so population Sciences is the not clinical research portion of their research uh Institute and so I met with her and we had a phenomenal conversation about my project and towards the end of my project she asked me she was like you know we hire a lot of USF students I'm not sure if that's something you're interested in but we have you know research assistant positions we work with the students a lot so we're very accommodating to student schedules and coming straight into grad school this is like my first semester I want to say it was like October or November so I I had just started I didn't know anyone in Tampa yet I was like you know I don't have a job so maybe this would be a great opportunity so I I did apply and I ended up working in a in a lab with a with a researcher and I very quickly found out it was I was doing surveys I absolutely suck at folding papers and putting them in in I I had a similar experience when I was doing fit are you familiar with fit kits yes Amo chemical yeah the you have to fold the notes and slide it in and and it was so funny because I was new at the time right and I was the youngest person on the team and they had one of the older nurse you know she not older she's in her 40s experience more experienced nurses looking at me and I was like messing around with the paper and she's just like oh this new generation doesn't know how to mail out envelopes yes exactly that's what they were telling me too they were like wow we can't believe you don't know how to fold an envelope I was like you know this is embarrassing now but lucky for me or unlucky for me I don't know covid happened very quickly right after I got that job so all of the actual uh research that was happening in the build in the building was on pause I came home and you know there was no more folding papers I was getting so many paper cuts it was a mess but the the same director I had interviewed called me one day and she was like hey we have a job that's not folding envelopes would you potentially be interested and I was kind of like yes like anything to get me out of you know mailing letters and the job was actually compiling all of the uh IRB accepted and approved research studies that Moffet does so mind you these are like hundreds and hundreds from every single Pi coordinating it all together and then creating a packet to then send to their covid response force is what they called it so it was a group of exe Executives who were coming together to go through every single research study that Moffet was doing and determine if that study had to be resubmitted to an an IRB to get new approval because we were implementing safety precautions and if that would change the actual study design so she was like yeah can you do this and I was like you know absolutely I will do anything you ask that is not letters and envelopes so that's actually how I transitioned and from there they just kind of kept giving me opportunities as they came up and I I kind of just never said no so I learned so much I've done so much within research with them that director is still one of my mentors and I will never forget how how much she believed in me after she saw my horrible origami skills so really never say no is is good advice then yeah definitely I think that would be like my one big thing is I never say no what I want to kind of understand as well before I ask you some more questions is when it came to a fellowship you know you probably could have gotten a job without a fellowship with all of your experiences was The Fellowship required or is that something that you chose to do so the fellowship is something I chose to do out of my graduating class I think am the only uh student that year who chose to apply and uh got a fellowship so I want to ask how many fellowships did you apply to and was Dana Farber your Top Choice yeah so I will prase this by saying I'm an I'm an extremely competitive person a lot of times I'm an extremely competitive person against myself so I told myself you know you're going to get a fellowship and that's what I wanted to do do I knew I didn't know what I actually wanted to do in a in a hospital I knew I wanted to be in a hospital and so I applied to like 35 wow yeah it was a lot I do not recommend for everyone to apply to that many but I told myself like I will get one so I applied to a lot I you know worked for almost a full year on my application really made sure it was perfect and then I had a short list of like the top like eight institutes or hospitals that I really was interested in so Dana farro is definitely in the top it was also the only uh Cancer Center that I applied to and it was kind of my that's surprising yeah I thought that you would have applied for like more or at least especially in the top would have been mostly Cancer Centers based on your research experience your family experience was there a reason why you didn't apply for more of those honestly there's not that many fellowships in Cancer Centers there's uh a couple in some of the ones that the big names that you hear like mdn Mayo Clinic uh Dana Farber but outside of those I I didn't really know if there was a lot of other uh fellowships but I also didn't know do I only want to do Cancer Care for the rest of my life or do I really want to expand and learn you know General Hospital like acute Hospital operations and so that's kind of why I had a mix of the two but I this was the only cancer focused Institute that was on my list it was really a a soft spot in my heart and I I love their mission so I think it's good that you're giving us this feedback because most apply for between 12 and 15 but the issue with that is that they're applying for 12 and 15 usually that they have ties to uh and so the ones that they get accepted to are the ones that they have tied like they've worked with people who work there or they've been a patient there for forever or XYZ and so their application is a lot more compelling so I think when you apply for 35 it helps us get of a broad overview of how many uh fellowships there are which is not that many like you're saying compared to the amount of fellows which is huge do you think you got into Dana Farber because your story and you know your application to them was especially compelling I like to think so I know in my in my personal statement I I did go very personal with my my family history about Cancer Care but also kind of my first glimpse into healthcare administration was when I was in the hospital not at Dana Farber but I was at I was at a children's hospital when I was younger and I I had I think scarlet fever but I was in the hospital maybe one night I remember there were so many doctors and nurses and I was like this is so cool like they're all fussing over me like I am the princess then I remember the food was terrible my dad went and got me onion rings from Burger King that's my favorite thing when I was little and you know as a healthy parent you weren't allowed to eat those all the time but I was in the hospital so I got all the onion rings I wanted and then I I vividly remember there is this one woman who came in who looked so out of place and she had like the most fabulous suit and she had heels and she was wearing makeup and you know as a young girl I saw her and I was like wow like I want to be like that like I want to be a you know business woman the way she is I want to be a boss like I want to look so good I had no idea what she was doing absolutely none I know she talked to my parents I know my parents were like wow this is phenomenal thank you we understand what's happening now and then I never saw her again and I yeah so I remember while I was in the hospital talking to all the nurses and the doctors and the clinicians who were coming in but then thinking back what I really remember was the woman and yeah so when I was applying I I knew I wanted to be that woman for someone else wow nice that is awesome well good that's a a great experience so uh excellent and so you you submitted these applications you know you wrote this incredible application and uh how many did you actually decide to go and interview with so I I think I got like 22 is first round interviews of the 35 some of them you know at at this point the the application cycle is is very short the turnaround time is very quick so I didn't hear back from a lot of the places that I had applied to or I I did a first round interview and then very quickly I heard like thank you so much you're phenomenal you are not our person which is hard to hear but also kind of understandable like they're interviewing so many people so it's a little scary at the Times a little bit of anxiety going on yeah oh man that month uh so the interview process happens from the first week or the first Friday of October to about the first Friday of November is that like interview period so that the application cycle closes that first Friday of October and then you know where you're going by you know the first to second week of November so in that point of time I was a mess I was an absolute mess it was my birthday month uh i i s I'm a Hindu so we have a lot of holidays that happen in the month um Hindu new year was happening during that time so I was going back home for the Val and like celebrating with my family I was all over the place and then I was you know flying out to different cities from different cities for these interviews so it was a very hard time I will admit I do I do not recommend that for everyone yeah I also tell people make sure you prioritize your health during this time because I did get really sick just from the exhaustion of it all wow that is uh yeah that's that's seriously very very impressive that you did all that and like I said I think preds too they they had this like expectation I think that they set for themselves of like this crazy like medical school which is like super like unbelievable you know it's like such a hard like so many people are burnt out after medical school and so I do see a lot of people doing like these really you know impressive things so that that's truly impressive and then why did you you know I assume you had a few choices to choose from you know like you said there was six there why did you go with Denna Farber so a big thing for me was the leadership I would be working with but also the culture and you know the values of the organization so one of my like first questions that I ask in every interview is like you know what was your first impression of of your Institute once you joined or your your hospital your organization for any job and I think it catches people a little bit off guard when you ask like what was your first impression but it also it gives you a very good understanding of what kind of culture you're walking into uh the second thing I like to ask is what kind of mentorship opportunities and uh kind of leadership development opportunities do they have so I I asked everyone you know a lot of people had very good answers but as I said earlier Dana Farber really had that it was that soft SP spot in my heart so when I had asked that I I was talking to my precept who was interviewing me at the time and I remember she she's just such a an amazing passionate driven leader and so I knew at the end of the day you know of the places that I had gotten into I think this is the leader that I want to work under and I want to learn under and this is the person whose you know hand I want in in the development of me in my career in my life Wow and so has it turned out well for you that decision have you enjoyed the past year or so I have yeah actually I am a two-year fellow so one of the other perks of my fellowship is it is or it was at the time that I applied a two-year Fellowship they did extend it from their traditional one-year Fellowship during the pandemic and a little bit post pandemic to really give fellows the time to learn and and grow as much as they possibly can during this weird you know phase because it's it's odd to not be in in the hospital or in the Institute So currently I'm actually in my office in the hospital which is phenomenal to be back here but yeah so I'm one of the first uh twoe fellows and I'm coming up at the end of my second year and I'm I've loved every second of it I've done so many cool projects I've worked with so many leaders here and just in the Boston area I went to ACU this year everyone knows Dana Farber so it's very cool to see yep absolutely wow I love to hear that love to hear fellows enjoying their their experiences I want to ask what what is one of the favorite projects that you've done so far absolutely so I've worked on a lot of different projects kind of in different areas I I've worked in finance we worked on our operating and our capital budget for the year so really closing out our budget which was a phenomenal experience for me to learn kind of real world you know that 500 million budget yep um because I I could do the $500 but I never really imple imp implemented that into the big budget but now I did I worked with strategy so I worked on a lot of process uh Improvement initiatives but I think one of my favorites was I worked in our ambulatory clinical operations department so that's under our like traditional operations we have since we are an outpatient facility with no hospital per se all of our clinics are outpatient clinics and so I I was actually able to work in our breast and um humanology Clinic to implement a pilot program because a lot of our patients who are coming in who get doctor's orders for you know seven days of treatment or not getting those they would have to get their you know order every day signed for uh infusion and it's really hard to find a Doctor Who's you know in patient rooms who's running around who's you know in meetings to assign a patients chart so I was able to implement a pilot program to actually have all of that done beforehand so that when our our patients actually showed up at our Clinic ready for you know infusion which is already in and of itself a long process they didn't have to wait and so everything was done beforehand everything was kind of sorted and settled just to make our the patient experience as easy as possible nice wow incredible projects so with real world impact is what like serious real world real Wow real world impact excuse me so that's that's uh wow wonderful wonderful so uh two of the last questions for you the first is what do you plan on doing after you're from Florida you're up in Boston what does that look like are you looking to stay at Denna Farber or are you looking to move back to Florida what is it looking like for you I feel like eventually I would love to move back to Florida I am a Floridian through and through however New England is really capturing my heart so at this point in time I'm not entirely sure I am looking for opportunities kind of everywhere a little bit following the mentality I had before of kind of applying as many places as I can but intentionally I would love to stay at Dana Farber and I think if we find a position that matches I will stay and if I find something that you know piques my interest if I can learn a little bit more somewhere else I might go there I am very curious on how does Cancer Care in acute care hospitals differ from cancer specialty hospitals so potentially let's see what might be Brewing yeah it would be would be a good learning experience there then for sure excellent wow yeah I mean I'm a big New England fan I love New England uh I love the Northeast in general so you know my vote is always to to stay in in the Boston Connecticut area but uh you know Florida definitely is very different and your family's there so you know my wife spent a lot of time in Florida and so so uh I can definitely get that Florida calls a lot of people down uh in that area yeah we have some great hospitals and Health Systems out in Florida but I feel like my parents are there like it's always going to be home so at this point in my life why not explore everywhere else of course and you can't beat you know Boston's hospitals I mean uh I know that their rankings fluctuate throughout the year but for me MGH will always be the best hospital uh in the world for for me at least so a phenomenal opportunity to work very closely with MGH yeah I know that's one of the great things to the Partnerships in in the city and kind of throughout the Northeast there's so many great Partnerships last question for you I appreciate your your time and you know you you know spending extra time as well with me um absolutely sorry I talk a lot no this is excellent I've Loved listening to it all you know I'll edit my own uh meanderings out of the video a little bit you edit my meanderings out too don't it's great it's great so last question what what do you recommend for people like myself earlier on in their career who you know how can we be as successful as you've been well I guess I've kind of sprinkled all the advice I had throughout this interview but definitely never say no to Opportunities you never know where they're going to come from I want to be like not so cliche with my it's all right I it's good it's good for people to hear I think sometimes the same things like over and over again I mean you know you talked about earlier identifying mentors never saying no you you didn't burn Bridges either when you left organizations I think that's really important so I think overall that's the never say know is is excellent advice yeah oh one more this is actually something I said in my uh AC panel the a couple weeks ago but make sure that when you're communicating with people you're really you know as much as you think that yeah I'm I'm a good communicator make sure your expectations are clear and every position in your life make sure that you can communicate clearly what you need and what they need and that what that's one of the ways that I haven't been able to you know burn Bridges and anywhere I'm going I'm able to maintain all of those mentors that I have met throughout my career that still work with me and shape me and are invested in my growth that's the way you could of cultivate your network which is huge Healthcare is like the tiniest of Industries even though it's so large everyone knows everyone if they don't know anyone you know they'll know someone who knows you yeah so yeah we heard a story like last weekend from one of our panelists and he said that uh he heard a story from someone else who had spoken badly about an executive at one of the hospitals they were working on you know like kind of gossiping you know and turns out the person he was gossiping to it was his wife H that's funny oh my goodness never seen a room like pin drop silent every single jaw was on the floor and I was like wow so the soice I Lear that was don't talk bad about people Health car is Tiny it it and that that is a crazy thing is it is very a very much smaller Community than I thought coming into it especially at the corporate level there's really not that many people uh but thank you so much for joining us yeah wonderful conversation I really enjoyed talking with you hopefully we can uh talk with you again once you H go on to your next stage of your journey absolutely I would love to thank you again for taking the time and for reaching out to you know hear my story</p>