<p>hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy and here with me is vane Vani please introduce yourself hi uh my name is VCI Celeste and I an administrative fellow here at luminous Health thank you so much VCI for joining us you have such a varied career throughout Healthcare you've been you know gaining all these years of experience you started way uh back at George Washington University with their M program very popular program what led you to apply there and what got you interested in he Administration absolutely so uh twofold a qu answer um what got me into George Washington I actually moved to the state of Maryland about a little over three years ago right in the middle of the pandemic May 2020 uh when I moved here I decided I was going to go back to school and uh get my mha um I already had that made up on my mind at the time I was working at Hopkins and I was working front desk at OBGYN the practice manager at that office was like hey are you you're considering applying to schools like yeah I'm looking at the schools in the area and she was like well I highly recommend George Washington as I am an Alum from I said okay awesome so um I was already planning on applying but like she really encouraged me to really push out there and try so I went ahead and applied and and the more I got to know about George Washington the the more I felt like it was it was a program that was right for me how did you like the program going through it absolutely um so the program is is great uh you spend your first two years uh in the academic setting um and then you know you get all your classes you get your hands on you get your experience in the um on the education side of things um and then that second year they're really trying to push and encourage you to take that next step or that leap of faith and get some experience whether you decide to go in a fellowship route or a residency um and so uh the way that I really one of the things that I really like about George Washington is that their fellowship program is part of the um requirements for you to graduate so it gives you that extra opportunity to really encourage students to go out there and try to apply and U that that's that's what I like about it yeah that's excellent and then so you started way back during you know undergrad in Georgia right yeah yeah so uh yeah that's part of the other part of the question so this kind of goes into the next part um so initially I thought I was going to go for physical therapy I started my undergrad out in Savannah Georgia during my time there though I did a lot of on ER work um has helped you know do a scholarship pageant and I helped um with like a scholarship for for the University at the time and when I did those projects I realized I really liked working with people and like you know solving problems and things of that nature so I decided I wanted to stay in healthcare but I explored out a little bit so after I graduated I decided I want to get some more experience in the public health space and the healthc care space um and I started my first job at a federally qualified health Center um you it was a primary care uh clinic so I got some hands-on experience I helped people sign up for healthare insurance and you know I got to the opportunity just to learn what it's like to be in the in the healthc care setting and I also had some support from leadership that you know hey if this is something that you're considering here's some things that you need to know and honestly that first experience is seal the deal for me that's what made me want to push for healthcare administration nice good for you and then were you born in Georgia uh so no um place I've been in many places so I was born in Boston okay Patriots fan and all of that I live there same here same here big Patriots fan yep awesome so yeah big Patriots fan um I was there until about 9ine and then I moved to the state of Georgia I moved around a little bit in the state of Georgia moved to Jacksonville Florida and then ultimately finally came here to Maryland excellent excellent yes so that's what I was going to ask you know I noticed you had that uh internship uh Mass gen and so you went all the way up back to Boston I was going to say how different was that but you lived there till you were nine so is it kind of like going home in a way absolutely so it was it was a two-fold opportunity um one to you know get the experience of being a Master General um but then to to spend time with family as well so it really worked out and I had a great experience there had um great mentorship um preceptors I really wanted to take the time to just teach me things um and like walk me through things and M I was really big on you know leading on teaching and educating having a learning environment for whoever comes in doesn't have to necess be so it was a great experience that's nice I I'm envious I miss I miss the Boston area I'd love to love to go up there sometime soon so yeah the only thing I wish you know it was uh I wish the Boston Celtics at that time if they could have won that would have been great that would have been perfect would been the I know it's been they've had some weird trades going on you know they've had some weird it's felt like their roster was really good for like a half a year you know a couple years ago and then it just went to Hill and since Tom Brady left I mean it's you know we're going through a season of change yeah we are we are and so then you you know you came back to Annapolis for your fellowship I wanted to ask how many fellowships did you apply to and then what areas of was it based on the areas of the country was it based on you know the organization how are you making those decisions yeah a couple of things so first thing that you know location is everything right like so you need to make sure that you're comfortable with the place that you live in from for me um I specifically wanted to stay on the East Coast that's where all my family is so um that was probably the first thing I looked I was like where do I want to live and I was like I feel most comfortable here on the East Coast um the second thing was looking at organizations that just generally dra you know catch my attention either I worked there previously or I just you know I know like how well they're like I know a little bit about their organization and things of that nature but then lastly the the the number you're asking me how many did I apply to I applied to a total of 12 okay and so when I one of the things that I was looking for so after I you know decided hey I'm applying to a couple of organizations here what I'm thinking about uh you started to ask like what exactly is it that you want out of a fellowship um and so when I started thinking of that I was like well I'm in a place in my life where I really want to grow but I also want to be in an environment where growth is like our key Focus like so I'm I led with I want to be in an organization focused on growth and then also with my past experiences and and healthc Care settings I really wanted to be in a community focused environment and so when I you know did my applications and applied and looked at different organizations um luminous Health was was definitely on the trajectory and it was a perfect fit for me that's great and can you tell us about luminous and and what the work that you do there is like and how that fit into your goals yeah yeah so luminous Health um is uh one the organization um is made up of uh three hospitals so two um two H hospitals one in andoro county and one in Prince George's County and then we have a behavioral health hospital here at anondo County as well um and then also we have a about over a little over a 100 ambulatory care sites within our system so as far as with our two hospitals um they're both um really embedded into their communities um Community focused hospitals so serving anono County on Annapolis um Maryland and then lant of Maryland in Prince George's County um so one of the things that were big that was one of the biggest things that were focused at luminous Health uh was their uh focus on building a woman's health milon in the Prince George's County um they just seen an access there's a need for Access of care within that area so they really wanted to provide that uh one of the things that we always highlight one of the biggest um metrics we want to highlight about Prince georgees county is that out of eight out of eight out of 10 mothers are forced outside of Prince George's County to deliver their children so there was just this real big need to say hey we need to really provide care within our area um so that's where when I was you know getting ready to apply that was one of the big stories is hey we're looking to apply and build This Woman's Health Pavilion and really expand care and access to care for our community um so that was one of the biggest things that really drawn me to luminous health and then secondly is uh for me I wanted a Project based project uh Fellowship as well and that's how it structured I really wanted to just get in a as much hands-on experience as possible so the way that the fellowship is structured is uh like I said Project based um but that second level of it is um we work with a program director who is Tory bis the CEO of luminous Health um so she oversees our whole Fellowship experience I have a co- fellow as long as well with me um and we serve at the two hospitals so I currently work at the anono medical center my uh preceptor is the president of that hospital her name is Sher Perkins um and so I work directly with her she serves as my my uh Fellowship mentor and adviser um so she really I spend about I meet with Tory Bailey at least weekly me and my co- fellow do and then we meet with to Sherry Perkins on a bi I meet with Sher Perkins on a bi-weekly basis she really helps guide and like um steer the fellowship experience for me and then she also is serves as a mentor so I can ask her as many questions as I want she's she's an open book and she's been really helpful that's great that you get to meet with you know kind of the top Executives in the organization on such a regular basis that must be pretty impactful yeah absolutely um I think learning from them is a is a huge it's a huge um um benefit and perk I believe that uh one just watching how they lead not only in just their day-to-day but like how do they work through their decisions how do they um work through any issues that we're working through within the organization and how do they lead other leaders um is something that I really get the opportunity to see um and it's it's a it's a great learning experience that's excellent yeah so what are some of the projects that you've been working on and that you've done while being there yeah um so I'll name two uh one of my favorite projects I got to recently work on is um uh we were working in the uh with the CT team um so the current issue was that we were trying to improve our Ed throughput it's a it's a common issue in hospitals um so we were looking specific Ally in the in the um CT um scan the order we're trying to figure out okay well we're having a large wait time or large CT scan order time to actual processing so what they wanted to do was they wanted to say okay well I think we have an issue in this area let's let's really dive deep into it so I worked with the process Improvement team and the Radiology team and we did a gima so I got to go sit down and spend a day um with the CT team and um just observe just watch their day today just see the things that's going on so one big benefit for me was just getting that you know exposure just being able to spend time with the team watch what it's like to be um in that space But then two just really start talking to people and asking like okay what do you think are some problems what do you think are our challenges here and just really just soaking in being a sponge so after we did that assessment um we came to the conclusion that um we realized there was a couple things but the biggest thing that we noticed was There's an opportunity to reduce our weight time specifically with transporting our patients to and from the CT scan room um what we found was that the actual scan itself took relatively minutes um tops 10 10 minutes depending on what the actual procedure was or 10 to 15 minutes depending on what the actual um order was um but the uh time was was really on the time it took for the patient to arrive and the patient to go back so what we did was we looked at the transport team and we looked at how it was structured and we realized there was an opportunity to we have a centralized transport team but we realized it might be more effective to just have a uh CT Tech Aid directly in the CT um CT scan room team and so we we basically came up with a new um care model uh for that for that unit we basically restructured a couple of things um and then we just to back it up my my role in that too was to say hey what is the data that we need to say this is something that we can actually move forward with and one of the things that we found was that about roughly around 70% of our orders were uh coming directly from the Ed so a majority of our Ed orders were coming from there and so we we decided that maybe there's it would be beneficial that kind of helped support their their case of hey if we had someone and part of the team who can help transport those patients directly IR ly from the Ed to the CT room we can greatly reduce our um CT order um times so ultimately uh we came up with the new structure um and one of the things that I really enjoyed about this new model too is that there was an opportunity from our perspective There's an opportunity to um not only have a new staff member part of the team but then also uh we wanted to have this level of um of growing for the opportunity for career growth or career ladder that's the word I was looking for oh yeah and so with that you know having someone directly part of the team seeing the opportunity to be a part of become a CT um and and then also continuing with the organization was something I was I thought was a really cool idea to incorporate so we're currently in the process of actually rolling that out um and we're actually just going to observe for the next few months to see the success of it um but I I do think that we'll be able to greatly reduce our CT order times with this with this new care model that is a super cool project and you're like right involved with it I noticed you mentioned the gimo walk and so are you trained in Six Sigma uh so that's the part of the second part um so one of the other projects that I'm doing is I'm actually going through my Green Belt certification now oh nice good for you yeah yeah so in order for me to get that there is a project that I'm working on as well um and so um I'm working with the patient experience team um they're currently going through the process of um just restructuring some of their govern structure at this time but then also saying like hey we have a a list of projects that we're working on but we just need a a singular place to actually um hold all that project um all those projects in one place so I'm helping them build that um project management tool um but then also trying to align that with their current governance structure that they're looking to build as well so and that in order for so I will be getting to answer your question I will be getting the certification once I complete this project so it seems like you'd be cut out for it it seems like you have good experience for that are you looking to do process Improvement like long term is that an area that you're interested in uh definitely open to it um so I am at this point right now it's in the application Phase of like where what's the next role for me I do think that um process Improvement is is a Hu is actually really really fun to do especially when you get to say like hey we looked at this problem we were able to work through it talk through it and we were able to collaborate with different individuals and then we've actually came up with the solution for them that they've been able to take and run with it um and then being able to see the the I guess the fruits of your labor in that sense is is really cool as well so definitely something I'm open to are you looking at staying in the DC area are you applying all over the East Coast what is that looking like yeah I think um I'm open to staying in the DC area but also kind of similar to when I was applying for fellowships of like hey I'm open to staying on the East Coast so keeping an open mind and you know my organization is supportive of me um they encourage whether you stay or whether you go they they just want you to continue to grow they really wanted to focus on my learning experience and they've definitely tailored that for me so um right now I'm looking to keeping an open mind that's excellent so I want to ask about that too you know it's always the anxiety when you apply to your undergrad program and then you're anxious about applying to your grad school program and then about the fellowship is it is it are you less anxious now about your next role or has the anxiety been the same throughout all year olds in terms of like the applying process getting a job what's that what's that like that's a really good question I think I think it's it's a little different now I I will say I'll say the fellowship experience one of the things that you know when they're looking for fellows they really want to get to know you they really want to know a little bit about you like so they're asking general questions like what do you like to do but then also they want to know what you've learned from your program and how you can apply those things so but prior to that in previous roles it was the question was always like are you qualified for this position I'm looking for these key skills so I think you know right now I feel like it's going to be a little bit of a mix of both of like what skill sets do you have for this specific role what did you learn from your program and then tell me a little bit about yourself as well so so they're gonna hit you with all three then from here yeah for yeah even better all three so I I feel a little comfortable but um I I don't necessarily know what to expect just yet about thew so of course yeah so not to you know we don't need to mention any specific numbers here but what what is the the living like in the DC area you know we have some people you know from across the country interested in moving here or there so you know in terms of the salary and the benefits you know are you able to live you know okay on what you know in the DC area or is it kind of a struggle would you describe that uh so I think um let's see I would say that DC in particular is the prices are going to be a lot higher um but for me like I live right outside of the um DC area so I live right in Silver Spring Maryland which is about 30 minutes of train ride to DC I would say DC um in particular the city area is a little bit pricier um if you live right outside of that area if you look in the surrounding areas you might be able to find something a little bit better um I think it was more common for you to have like roommates if you live in DC area versus like in the in the little bit outside you may still want to have a roommate but it's it's you don't necessar it's not necessarily required as far as what to do though um plenty of things to do um one of my favorite things because I live most of my life in the South so like coming up here and having like a train that is actually very usable as is PR cool so um you know getting around the city is not really much of an issue um it's so there's plenty of things to do there's plenty of activities on the weekend right now we're in spring so in a couple weeks cherry blossom is you know season's coming out so a lot of people are going to go out and about and see that so um as far as a living area there's plenty of things to do so if you like sports there's stadiums there's you know concerts there's all types of things here and I've I've been having fun oh and also DC is a foodie City so yes yeah so brunch food all of that that's just a that's just part of the culture so there plenty of things to do plenty of food to eat excellent so you'd recommend DC as an area people should you know keep on their lists then maybe live a little bit outside the city you know utilize the great Transit there the the nationally funded train system that they have there that's I would recommend it absolutely yeah wonderful thank you so much for coming on I really enjoyed talking with you it sounds like you love your program both your your graduate and your fellowship program so we're going to you know link those in the the video description here so potential fellows can check them out I really appreciate you sharing your insights with us yeah absolutely thanks for having me it's been a pleasure talking to you today um and thank you I look forward to seeing the post</p>