The CalOptima Administrative Fellowship & Life at UCI Health with Keya Gupta

<p>hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy I'm joined uh this evening by a really special guest k k please introduce yourself so hi everyone uh my name is Kay Gupta I am a organizational consultant for at uccii Health uh I work under the program and performance management office um and I lead uh various operational and special initiatives for our chief operating officer and chief nursing [Music] executive it's great to have you on because we get to see the outcomes here of an administrative fellow you recently exited that back in April right uh and so it's it's great to talk about people who you know what the outcomes look like post Fellowship so that's Wonder ful going back to uh undergrad and grad school how did you find your way into healthcare administration so you know I think that's um it's a very interesting question and um also kind of a long-winded answer but I'll I'll try to keep it you know relatively short um growing up I grew up in a family of Engineers my dad um worked at Nasa for over 40 years um and so you know him and everyone else my family nobody was you know was in any career remotely related to health care but um you know I I think um as I was growing up um you know just U being a first generation South Asian-American from um you know growing up in an immigrant family um one of the things that was always touted was you know you're either you should either be one of like the big three which is like a doctor or a lawyer um or an engineer and so so um I knew from very early on that I was really interested in science and stem um and so I had originally set my sights on becoming a doctor and my parents were like fully behind that that that goal um and you know I think it's interesting I I think the only reason I kind of wanted to go that route is because I didn't really have an idea of what other careers were out there um in the healthcare World um and so I just felt like you know when you think healthcare like you think like something clinical immediately I feel like so it's like nurse or doctor something like that and so um yeah I had set my sites on that I I went into college I did my undergrad at UCI UC Irvine um and you know set my sites on getting my public health degree because I had originally thought I would just you know finish my prerequisites for med school and go that route um when I started um College I I also had the opportunity to intern at a local uh Community Health Organization called the Down Syndrome Association of Orange County and that's in Costa Mesa California um I had to complete some hours in order to graduate from UCI and so I ended up doing my internship with them and um during the six months that I was with them I met a lot of Public Health leaders like in our our Orange County Community who um you know were building these programs for the benefit of of our communities um and then during you know during my tenure at at that organization I had the opportunity to design and develop and Implement programs for adults and Adolescent and also children with Down Syndrome um and so I I noticed that a lot of these leaders who were you know leading organizations and community health organizations had their mha and I didn't really no I had no like introduction um as to what that was and um you know one day I reached out to uh one of the leaders in in um an organization that I worked closely with and I said you know what like how did you get this degree what is this degree about and so that was kind of like my first intro into uh what healthcare administration or Healthcare Management really was and um so you know by the end of my almost at the end of my underg graduate career I had kind of already started to like switch my mindset into you know stepping back from from Clinical but maybe going into something on the management side only because I felt like you know maybe this is where my strengths lie um and in that time also switched my major in undergrad from public health to psychology which um was something of interest to me and so um as I did that you know I I started you know trying to think like what am I going to do you know for grad school am I going to go the healthcare admin route um am I going to go the psych route and get my doctor of psychology like what do I want to do um and you know uh after I graduated from UCI um I was hired on full-time by the Down Syndrome Association of Orange County and was there for a couple of years um and really just connected with the community became so passionate about um uplifting and empowering those teens and adults with Down Syndrome especially um and I just felt like you know Healthcare admin was the the the right path for me um and so ended up applying to um Concordia University which is right down the street from UCI it's a um small but beautiful um little little private university that just had an incredible um mha program that was really um you know set set up for individuals who like wanted to work and gain experience working while they were doing their mha um and so that's kind of that's kind of like how that was kind of like the the my guess my thought process and journey into getting into that um on the personal side of things um I will say I would say like at the end of high school kind of starting undergrad um my dad actually um started to fall ill um and so he he got diagnosed with Parkinson's disease um as well as endstage renal disease um and so had to start dialysis and things like that and so um I was kind of put in this position as like the first born you know just that having that responsibility of um trying to understand like what his care would look like you know um taking him to doctor's appointments dialysis appointments and really just being that like advocate for my dad but also being that spokesperson you know um and middleman kind of in between like the doctors and my parents and just being kind of that glue and I feel like in some ways and that you know I I was able to kind of glean some like care management skills um and so so that was really interesting and just kind of seeing the care seeing how the care system or the Health Care System worked through my dad's eyes like from a from a patient's perspective um was also you know during during this time um throughout my undergrad and and graduate um ten years seeing that patient care perspective is also kind of what catalyzed my passion and like drive for wanting to get into Healthcare admin um and I just became I I I think just really interest in understanding um what culturally competent care looks like and should look like and what you know um equity in care should look like for the future so those are just kind of some of my interests and just wanted to share the personal kind of part of of my journey that's so important that that personal connection that helps you to be a better advocate for patients right and that's that's really what the duty of the healthcare administrator is right we're supposed to keep care efficient keep quality High by supporting our clinicians and advocating for the patients and so that's that's so important thank you for sharing your personal experiences and and I love how valuable those real world experiences have been for you I think that's something to encourage the you know undergraduate and graduate students is to seek out these opportunities um you are also appointed to the AC board of directors shortly after getting your mha and you serve on some other uh boards as a as a director there and then you've had success with these internship opportunities so um you're very employable recruitable person do you have any advice on how early in your career right before you have the 10 years of practical experience how you've been successful at getting uh in the room I think it starts with honestly just very simple things um being curious asking questions and um when people see that you are interested in growing and learning a lot of times they automatically take an interest in your growth as well um and so when I was in when I was I think like end of first year of my master's program I reached out to my program director and I said hey I'm really interested in finding some sort of opportunity that's going to help kind of bolster and supplement the education that I'm getting in the program is there anyone you can connect me with um or any sort of project that's going on kind of behind the scenes that I can get involved with and so fortunately um she actually knew somebody from our local Southern California AC chapter um Dr Trisha cassab um who at the time I believe was a VP of quality at Adventist Health and was on the board of directors of AC soal was looking for someone to complete a a project with her a student who you know just had that bandwidth and so um I was introduced to her and another one of my colleagues who also serves on the board of directors now with me as well and she was at USC at the time um and the three of us worked together on building um this video that really documented over 50 years of AC SoCal history uh something that had never been done before and so that was kind of like my first um just kind of little bit of dipping my toes into the world of AC and that organization and from there Dr kassav literally took me like under her wing and was like you need to get involved with AC um you need to get involved with student council and so they had a student council got involved with that um and I also saw like some opportunities that I felt like maybe the board um you know themselves would be interested in having a young student like myself kind of helped them out with and um for them that was kind of like social media or website I I really felt like um the organization was doing some incredible work and just didn't have like the social media reach yet um and so I kind of stepped in to that role and started doing stuff by myself and um eventually leaders in AC SoCal kind of noticed and that's kind of how I like stepped into the chair of um the the chair of communications role that I now hold and have held for the last two years um so yeah again um just going back to the advice be curious ask a lot of questions go to networking events it's it's really tough to put yourself out there as a young student because you go to these events and you see these executive leaders and you're like they don't want to talk to me like they're not going to like that I go up to them but the reality of it is and and someone told me once that everyone puts their pants on the same way every morning and everyone that goes to these networking events is interested in networking and so these leaders are just as interested in getting to know you as you're getting to know them and you are in getting to know them and um you know you just you you have to like overcome that mental block and it's really tough but once you do like you'll continue to do it and you'll start growing and making those connections that's wonderful yeah thank you for sharing that I found that to be very true with with my networking events that I've gone to and so over the two years that you were on the that you've been with social you know the communications chair how how has your success been have you seen a good growth in in the social media absolutely um you know I think um when I started our link our LinkedIn probably had maybe a thousand followers we just about crossed the 6,000 follower Mark um not too long ago um and our Instagram as well has grown I would say by triple um over the last two years um you know the first year I was kind of getting my bearings and really just kind of built out what like our our communication strategy would look like going forward and then in the second year because we had so much of a demand from our members to see more I ended up building out a committee and just have some been have I've had the opportunity of um working with some really really incredible individuals who now oversee all of our social media we have a couple of individuals Who oversee our our newsletter we do four newsletters a year um and we have a historian and so we've really really just grown and it's it's it's incredible um and it's just it's so needed for our chapter because our our SoCal chapter has also grown exponentially over the last two years so it's been an amazing experience so this is an interesting question on that right is is why is it important for these Healthcare Executives like yourself and I know we're going a little bit often in the other direction here but I just wanted to ask why does it matter that you understand social media and that you have people in that area right because a lot of organizations think oh we'll just Outsource this we don't need to learn about it right but you've found great success in knowing how these things work why is that important how do they actually benefit from knowing that information well you know I think social media and and now you know with the added AI kind of Journey that we're all on is it's just a fact of the the current and future um you know I I think that I mean it's great to Outsource some of these things but um really having somebody who you know understands you know what social media does to benefit an organization but also has that background in healthcare or whatever industry you're working in um it it's it's beneficial because those individuals are able to um really connect the dots in terms of building out that strategy for how your organization should grow and they're really able to Target different I would say they're able to Target different constituents that these organizations need to Target as they continue to grow um so that's that's my take on it um I think at any given time really and now I'm kind of going off on a tangent into you know working with different Generations but if you think about it um especially in healthc care like at any given time you have at least five generations working together in healthcare and so I think I think the real question for you know the the newer Generations you know gen Z and Beyond is um you know what are we doing to um number one be flexible with working with all of these generations and how can we use that to our advantage as we grow into our leadership five generations that's um interesting when you put it in that perspective yeah W and and thank you for sharing that um that message behind how important that is really appreciate that so shifting gears back to your journey right you you've done these incredible things and then you you decide to pursue a fellowship you probably and I ask a lot of fellows this everyone gives me a different answer and that's why I keep asking it because it's so important why did you decide to do the fellowship instead of continuing on in Industry you most likely could have gotten you know a promotion or or continued to level up so why was The Fellowship chosen why was that valuable I think it's a good question so uh once I graduated from my mha mha I actually so I didn't go straight into a fellowship I actually was set on not going the fellowship route and so I actually started working at Palomar Health which is a community hospital system down in San Diego um so I was working in the organizational development space there and I did that for about a year and um honestly I just really felt like I was missing something and I I think organizational development is such a great space and a needed space in healthcare but I felt like I really needed to gain I needed an experience where I could gain more knowledge number one about what other areas in healthcare there were because I I didn't really feel like I had found like my space in healthcare yet and so because of that I decided to pursue an administrative fellowship and uh it's it's really interesting because I thought I was gonna do like 30 to 50 applications and um one I ended up only applying to one that I saw just like pop out on LinkedIn very early on um even before Fellowship season started and I appli to that one and that was the one that I ended up getting and it happened to be 50 minutes from my house so I I think things just kind of aligned but yeah at the end of the day I I wanted to grow but also to kind of explore my interests in different areas that's uh incredible so you have 100 % acceptance rate so why why just the one so um I mean I think a couple of different reasons um you know I I think if I if I didn't get into this one yeah I I would have gone on and applied to the to the others that you know whose applications were coming out maybe four or five months later but by that time I was already kind of in the end stages of of the fellowship that I accepted did uh the position for um I would say this organization in general was uh Cal Optima Health was something an organization I had always had my eye on um I I would be driving around and I would always see their ads and I knew there were a healthcare organization but I didn't really understand I knew there were a manag Care Organization but I didn't really understand how that worked and so that challenge kind of like intrigued me um and so I honestly I think I I just set my sights on that one because I really wanted to learn um you know what government paid Insurance programs look like um you know how strategy and operations Works in a manage Care Organization um and really at the end of the day just wanted to um explore if that was something that that I was interested in yep no and so that makes sense because that intentionality we've seen right that intentionality leads to acceptances when it comes to Fellowship so that's important did it what was it like working there did it live up to your expectation did you enjoy caloptima what do you have to say about that honestly I I had a an incredible experience um what I was one of the things that I was looking for in a fellowship was this challenge um and this was something that I had stated during the interview process that I was looking for an experience where um I was thrown into ex challenges and projects and experiences where I would it where I would essentially be uncomfortable because I didn't know anything about it like I wanted to be uncomfortable and in order to grow so there's that Gap in between uncomfortability and uncomfortability and and that that g that Gap is like where you can grow and so I really wanted I just really wanted that growth um and so the the the fellowship itself um only had two rotations so you do a six-month rotation in one department and then another six-month rotation in the second Department being that this was the inaugural Fellowship like cohort so they had this was literally their first year um of of the fellowship that they had started um we kind of had it was myself and two other fellows who got recruited we kind of had a little bit more leeway with how we wanted to structure things and I was very vocal from the beginning in saying that I was interested in operations and strategy which is what I wanted to pursue to see if if I liked it or not so I ended up doing um my first um rotation with medical management which is essentially you know learning kind of like the operations of Care Management for the organization's members um during that time um there was an organization wide um project that was going on um so the organization was trans sunsetting their old Care Management platform think of it like epic but for a Managed Care Organization um and they were implementing a new one and so that's huge because that the the platform they were sunsetting had been in use for like 15 plus years and so there's all these you know departments that you know when I I walked into was that there was a lot of departments who were kind of like on the fence about even wanting to transition because obviously you know they were they were comfortable with with what they had used for such a long time but regardless the transition was happening and so um one of the executive directors um of that of who was overseeing one of the the the work streams for this transition ended up leaving the organization and a week later I was being told um that they wanted me to lead that work stream and so this was very very early on in the fellowship like this was like two months in like I had not even like you know sunk my teeth into the complexity of the organization and so um I ended up um you know becoming lead for that that um that work stream um and really gained this incredible experience um connecting with so many different departments gting an understanding of what it means to be a healthcare administrator who works in operations right you don't necessarily have what I what I learned um all in all from that experience was you don't necessarily have to be a subject matter expert you know as a healthcare administrator um someone who's working in operations but you need to have the ability to connect the teams that know know the subjects um know the subject matter so um and and I think that's that's kind of like you know a special skill in itself um and so that's something that I learned and then I ended up staying um with that project in medical management for close to nine months so that was like a huge chunk of my fellowship and after that I ended up moving into strategy for my last rotation but I was only with them for about three months because the fellowship ended um but in strategy um it it was that was an interesting rotation um I was able to gain an understanding of um what kind of the grant processes look like how the organization receives money from different um state and federal bodies and then how they kind of disperse that out to our communities um so all in all I I had the opportunity to gain this kind of like 50,000 feet view from that from the strategy experience you know understanding how the work that Cal Optima Health does affects our communities and our members but then you know going back to the first rotation I was I I had the ability to to zoom in and really kind of gain an understanding of like the inner workings of the organization so um just a great experience overall that really prepped me for the next step that's thanks for that overview as well I'm sure that potential fellows are definitely going to love hearing about that experience that is awesome um one of the things we've been trying to address is when evaluating Fellowship programs potential applicants often look at their retention rate and avoid programs with a low retention rate you decided to leave uh Copa you did not stay there post Fellowship right um why why did you choose to leave and why should we maybe not use retention rate as an evaluator that's a good question um so I'm going to start with the last one the last question first because I think that in the past the retention rate using the retention rate as an evaluator made sense um you know years ago um I think a lot of the the whole like underlying reason why people used to go and and um get their fellowships is because number one they wanted to kind of catalyze their leadership and management skills they were hoping that that would you know kind of um spearhead their movement into like a management role like right away and in the past that has been true of of you know what fellowships were I think that in the in the current time in the present with a lot of um hospital and health organization still kind of reeling from the economic um you know side effects of you know covid I think that that that's a different that that an the evaluation the metrics that we use to evaluate um uh fellowships needs to kind of change a little bit um I will say that um I I'm I was part of an a National Organization during the time of my fellowship the national Administrative Fellowship Network um and this is like a group of maybe 20 25 um even more admin fellows um who were all kind of going through the fellowship process at the same time um and we were doing work to you know help empower the next generation of of administrative fellows and out of that group I would say the majority of us did not stay with our organizations and I think that could be for many reasons economic reasons um just also personal choice um for me I could see myself continuing on in the Managed Care industry um but I you know seeing as I had prior experience on the provider side um in in like a hospital environment I I sort of felt that being in Managed Care was a little bit removed from the actual patient care that's taking place um and so in essence I um I kind of wanted to get back onto the hospital side of things thank you for for telling us about that and then also sharing that from the nfn there that's really important I I just think it's you know it's a shame to rule out places because of a metric that might not exactly be the be the best right and so I've been encouraging people to potentially look at at institutions which provide an awesome experience like the one that you had um and especially because your program is early right so their their attention rate might be you know 2% or something right since it's the first cohort and that's not a bad thing so yeah um so so after your fellowship where are you now you know what organization are you with what are you doing for for work so post Fellowship um you know I'm now with UCI Health which is just down the street from Cal optimate Health where I did my fellowship um and I I absolutely love it um I actually did my graduate internship at UCI um a couple of years back and so um you know it's I think it's kind of come full circle um I I I had um I had an incredible opportunity um I think um just by um you know making connections with individuals in my a network and had a couple of really incredible opportunities um and you see Health you know with um you know I think has actually I feel like has gone Global with their recent news of acquiring for tenant hospitals um and so you know I believe they are now the largest health system in in the whole UC system in California um and so it's just it's just a really interesting and amazing time to be at this organization because there's a lot of activation that's going on you know we we also have a new hospital that's opening next July in Irvine California so that with that new added hospital um as well as a rehab hospital we will have I think six or seven hospitals at that point um so the the growth at this organization has just absolutely exploded and with that brings so many opportunities for um especially young professionals like myself um to really learn Lear and grow in their careers and so um a lot of my you know day-to-day work um is really just um project management program management um I I I'm working on I would say seven to eight different initiatives um some of them are related to operations activation at our new hospital um some of them are that this one might sound really mundane but I actually really really love it um we switching out the monitors in our hospitals from uh one uh brand to the other and so getting the opportunity to kind of lead and guide that project from an OP an OP standpoint um it's just it's a great opportunity and um the teamwork between um UCI health and the organization that we're switching to has just has been incredible and um another really cool project um is our conier health project which um the organization um you know we we do have a con health program so it's just about kind of growing and and building that and um making that available and accessible for our members in Orange County and so um lots of really really fun things on the horizon um and and my team as well is is just growing and so just a great time to be at the organization wonderful let's get a little bit more granular real quick though I want to talk about this this monitor switch out what is that um what is that workflow look like for you you said it was really interesting so what is just so that you know we can understand the kind of work that you're doing postfellowship what do you have to do do you have to coordinate meetings or or you know proposals what does that look like so when I when I joined UCI Health um this this project um you know was kind of had already been um in activation for about a year um from from an operation standpoint um I would say that um one of the key things that I'm focusing on is our supplies so you know as we're kind of changing out these monitors you know their patient monitors and there's also a couple of items that we're um tacking on to our anesthesia carts um and so with that kind of transition um you need different different types of cables um different devices that like hook things up together hook device hook one device to another advice um and so it's my my focus right now is keeping track of all those cables all of those devices and ensuring working with our procurement and supply chain teams you know being that kind of glue to ensuring that you know we have all our verse supplies ready for our go live in every single unit so for example we actually had our our go live in our Orange Hospital was U this Monday this past Monday so we went live in a couple of our units um next week we'll go live in our Ed the week after that we'll go live in our preop and pacu and so all of these areas in the hospital they have different needs for different supplies different cables so it's ensuring that they have what they need and that their their supplies will be replenished over time and just kind of creating the workflows for that alongside some of our departments excellent that is really cool I can see why you you enjoy that though because it's not as onee as it as it might seem by the sound of it right exactly exactly wow that is excellent thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this with us it's so uh impactful your your journey and I think a lot of the people are gonna um who watch these are going to really resonate with the things that you know you've experienced and then also gain some really important advice um I hope we can have you back on as you get more and more experience you know as you really form into this incredible executive leader I hope we can have you back on again to share some more insights oh I appreciate it yeah absolutely you know let's let's keep in touch and um yeah we'll we'll we'll chat again sometime soon hopefully</p>