The Methodist Health System Residency: Rebecca Reynolds' Journey in Healthcare Administration

<p>hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy joined by a very special guest from the Texas area Rebecca Rebecca please introduce yourself hi everyone my name is Rebecca Reynolds I'm the administrative resident at Methodist Healthcare System in San Antonio Texas this system is half owned by HCA Healthcare and half owned by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries [Music] thank you so much for coming on Rebecca it's a really unique and interesting system that you work at and of course you have a really great uh career in history in healthcare starting of course at BYU with your bachelor in public health what caused you to get that Bachelor's in public health what was the kind of initial thing that started that Journey yeah my the advice I received going into college was to study something that you're passionate about and that'll make your bachelor's degree fly by so I I took that advice to heart and I chose Public Health um specifically I got a minor in gerentology I love serving this extra vulnerable population and understanding their needs and how to best serve them so I I had a great experience at BYU getting to do some research and then to understand the larger part of Health across the United States and on an international level as well well what do you like about gerontology what's interesting about that for you the I mean I would say probably some of their risk factors that they have um the geriatric population because of the many gray elderly people that have influenced my life in my career and so it's kind of just more of a personal level for me rather than a academic or research driven level I think those can be the most impactful right when it's a real personal passion that you have so I think that's excellent excellent thing to mention there and then so just to you know kind of chronologically speaking what were some of your first roles and then what led up to you doing your uh mha MBA how did how did that kind of transpire there yeah I'm I'm happy to share more about that so one of my first roles was a healthcare law clerk for neov Law Firm I started that truthfully because I thought I might want to be a lawyer that actually just helped me steer clear of that route and dive more straight into Healthcare now keep in mind that when I was studying um Public Health it was during the pandemic and that's also when I had the opportunity to work in mortgages during the refinance boom so I got to see what the strain on two different types of levels looked like both Healthcare and in the housing market and I transitioned from that towards working in um United Healthcare um in their company called optim if you're unfamiliar with it it's a value-based Care Organization and I was in the Utah and Idaho markets and I ran the misalignment pro um process which looked at a again a more vulnerable population people over 65 once again for the most part and people who don't want to see their doctor I'm sure many of you have someone in your life that does not enjoy seeing their doctor so um my my husband would be one of those people but I wanted to work in value based care and also for an insurance company so I can understand the payer side of things prior to working in healthcare administration I had the chance to do an internship um for HCA a patient experience internship and that's when I for one discovered HCA what it meant to be part of a company that treats you like family and what I also love about working in hospitals is while I was there every nurse anyone you talk to in a hospital they always say my my hospital I haven't seen that in any other industry I've worked in no one ever says my Law Firm or my bank hospitals it's just a very personal environment um and it's kind of a sacred calling in that way because of the chance you have to serve people and to improve their lives so after I did that internship that's when I knew for one that I was willing to spend a lot of money on my next few degrees um where we're just going to call it like it is but then also it gave me the passion that was needed for me to wake up every single day before school ready to work towards getting this residency for HCA and the Methodist healthc care system so that for me that's unique I don't know if my other classmates woke up with that same passion every day for school and that's fine if any of you out there haven't found your passion yet but it that that's really what let me led me to wanting the mha at least and then the MBA um I just really wanted to increase my understanding of accounting and finance and even economics so that's how all of that tied in it was all just for the benefit of my personal learning I felt that I had a lot to do to learn and grow and to be ready for a challenging role such as being a resident for HCA and Methodist Healthcare System yeah that that's a a wonderful Journey um and and very beautiful too what you said about that that you know how hospitals are so personal that's so important looking at of course the NBA image are you completed with that program yet I have completed it um thank you for asking Cole I'm still I'm still on the high of celebrating my graduation um back in May but that that was a great experience I I had so many professors that were there ready to Mentor me um and they they still honestly Mentor me they give me advice on how to handle this residency and also just how to understand Hospital operations better I I have to ask here how many credits is that that program right because it's it's two master's degrees and you've done a bachelor's right and you know not to reveal your age but you know it's impressive what you've accomplished in a short period of time I actually off the top of my head I couldn't tell you how many credits it was um Cole it it was a long journey um I I I've always been one of those people that's taking um way more classes than anyone else is in a semester um that's just that's just kind of who I am I that and that's kind of just how I operate as well not gonna lie you're not you know you're not just you know single living on campus doing this full-time right you're you're married you have of course those responsibilities of being married you're working full-time right for or doing these internship things and you're also doing this program do you have any tips on how you manage all of these things right because to a lot of those who are just starting undergrad especially I know you know I was taking 12 credit and I was overwhelmed um you know of course towards the end of it probably like yourself taking the the maximum 21 you know it wasn't as hard but any tips at all yeah I mean you this is where there's a there's an opportunity for some self-reflection for everyone listening to this out there um if I'm telling you that you know I took 18 credits a semester and then I worked full-time and sometimes did an internship or another job on top of that I'm not saying that's what everyone's route should be or even has to be um part of how that happened I mean I I paid for all of my schooling myself and so I didn't necessarily have the luxury to not work but then also um it's it's much easier for me to work and go to school because I can directly apply some of the things that I'm learning in another environment compared to in school but um when we now I love talking about work life balance because that's the hottest topic I think of the last five years is how do you achieve work life balance and how this was possible for me most of my roles were remote remote jobs um that I think the pandemic and when I worked at the for prime lending that that department had actually been remote for like the last 15 years I'm very impressive that they've been doing that but I I don't know if there's any other way that I could have handled um work in school if there weren't some of these remote opportunities when I did my mha and MBA I did as much remote work as I possibly could my my professors were pretty understanding my situation for one I actually still lived in Utah while I was trying to do this program in Texas now schools are shifting away from remote classes which I I kind of think that's a shame we we could probably talk about that for the next 10 minutes Cole but just because of the opportunities it takes away from you and your personal life and at work and I I eventually I actually had to fly down to Houston a few times to wrap up some projects for school um and so then at some point you just have to choose your heart that's that's a quote that I kind of live by is you know at some point like one day you're going to look back and think okay why why didn't when I why didn't I get a master's degree right I had a school counselor who said you know if you're thinking about getting a master's degree at all Rebecca do it now don't don't wait um because one day you're going to wake up the like three years have passed and you'll kind of regret that maybe you didn't do some of these night classes I I I've received a lot of advice and I've had um a lot of people who have been very understanding of some of my situations what I'm trying to accomplish when you when you just tell people what your goals are they're more than likely just going to support you and do what they can to remove barriers I think that's true as school at work and even in my personal life I've have an extremely supportive husband I tell him all my crazy dreams and he's never saying why do you want to do that he's saying how can we make it happen so that's that's a beautiful beautiful thing that I have going for me in my life and I just always let people know what your dreams are well please let us know what what are your your dreams I'm excited to hear them if you don't mind sharing this episode of the strategy of Health was sponsored by modality Global advisers modality Global advisors optimizes Hospital Revenue enhances patient experience and delivers proven results visit modality Global advisors.com to learn more yeah of course so the the biggest dream that I've recently accomplished is getting to be in this Residency program for HCA and making it to the Methodist healthc care system market and this program lasts for a year I have the opportunity to learn as much as I can so for my short-term goals I spend every single day trying to learn everything I can about Hospital operations specifically and then since I also have an MBA I'm still trying to learn more about um Hospital even just like the financial operation side of things and some of the strategy and so after I finished this program I want to continue looking at hospital strategy and operations those are my two big passions and there's there's lots of different roles that you can do to accomplish that and this is where I on a very very personal know I don't know if this will resonate with anyone else listening but I truly believe that's what's supposed to happen in in your life will happen for you um sometimes you know you can call it manifesting that's another Hot Topic people say just manifest it um and you know that's if that's what you believe in of course and I I think I believe in manifesting if that's what we want to call it but the things that are supposed to happen in your life and the things that you're supposed to learn they will come to you and so I I believe that looking forward as I try to you know Master Hospital operations becoming you know coo maybe even CEO one day or maybe VP a strategy I'm not actually entirely certain exactly which those roles I can make the most impact in but I know that the correct role will show up for me um in the correct position and in the correct timing but for now I'm focused on The Daily learning that's required and my new role yeah that's a really important thing to have is to have you know that setting the the bar high in the future of course for your future goals that you're always working as hard as you can but then focusing on the day-to-day trying to soak up that information right especially in you know a learning program like a residency but looking back as well here's what you know is really interesting you have experience more experience than most people when they exit their um graduate programs right uh you know two years at at prime lending um if you add up the three other experiences there's you know another probably year or two and then of course opum which was about a year so you you know you're coming out four or five years of experience um why do the residency right because uh in terms of you know you probably could have gotone into industry right you know working at optim and you know sometimes look at that and they might pay you more so you know you might be sacrificing 20 $30,000 a year uh but why is that residency knowledge valuable and so important it it is honestly a sacrifice um you you did identify something that that's a question my husband actually asked me it's kind of why why are you going to school again why do you want to do this residency when you could just have your career already um and like I I have no doubt that there's probably like a strategy some operations job out there for me already that I could dive into but what's really unique about the residency and if if you haven't heard or ever met a resident um from HCA the um H HCA has multiple leadership programs the program that I'm in is called officially the executive Residency program and if you've never met one of us um that's fine you're meeting one right now so it's it might be a sacrifice in the short term one year in your career to sacrifice isn't isn't that much I don't even know if I view it as a sacrifice because of the level of access that HCA grants you so they they just barely sent all of us out to Nashville to meet each other and to do what they called the leadership accelerator they give you lots of opportunities to learn as as much as you can about Healthcare in the broad scope and then I also have lots of access to things in a hospital that I normally wouldn't have access to so most residents they'll they'll get to see every single Department in a hospital they'll get to meet every single type of person that works in a hospital and you don't get to do that in other jobs when I was at United Healthcare I didn't get to meet every person that worked in the company um that and United Healthcare is also massive but at HCA they really prioritize your learning and they call it exposure getting exposure to every Department um I'm at some point I'm going to do an EMS right along to understand that part of the healthc Care picture but then I'm I'm also in a unique situation right now in my residency program where I'm actually at a hospital that's being built right now um the hospital I'm at is West over Hills hospital we will be opening this November I am thrilled to have us open so I've um received kind of unlimited projects is how I would describe it it takes a lot to open a hospital and that's again why I don't necessarily even view this as a sacrifice because of how many um projects I've been given how many people I've been able to meet and how much learning um I've I've learned much more in these last four months than maybe I've even learned from compared to the year at United Healthcare just because of how much HCA does for me for me to just learn I I have AIP question about this so I think a lot of people hearing this are going to be very amped right uh including myself right this is very exciting but uh what when you were looking right what is the difference between this and a fellowship or or I mean I'm sure you probably came across administrative fellowships right while you were looking at different things what kind of narrow it down to this program and and if you can shed any light on the naming of it right administrative resident versus administrative fellow I know that some people The Residency is usually only like a couple months but this seems very different than what people traditionally would say like a residency is so a fellowship I I did look at another fellowship I look at Mayo's fellow yeah um that that's about a year program as well and they they do a pretty good job at trying to rotate you through different areas now I I don't have very much exposure to Mayo Clinic to speak more on exactly what fellows get to do but The Residency program for HC is unique because um of how intentional HCA is of building their leaders it's kind of like they try to create leadership pipelines in some ways um when when you become a resident you kind of make the list if you will um I don't know how to humbly say that but um a AA will um just kind of take notice of people that are in these leadership programs um at at higher levels I'm not sure exactly how high up it goes but PE people are aware of you when you're signing up for these leadership develop M programs um we even have um these clinical leadership development programs as well so there's um a clinical nurse leadership certification that we'll offer for some of our charge nurses and HC has some very intentional programs that um they're they're pretty transparent about you know if you're um going to be promoted or things that you need to keep learning and working on there's um basically every single opportunity that you could hope for in your career to learn in advance HC brings it directly to you as long as you're willing to keep working at it um I'm not going to say that I think being um an administrative resident and I doubt being administrative fellowship and an administrative fellowship program is easy work um you and I mean that's where it's kind of back to when you tell people what you want to do with your life you're going to find a lot more supporters and a lot more people that try to hold you back and so when you're in when you're in a program like this if you if you end up doing a fellowship if you end up in um H's Residency program um be be intentional with letting people know that you're here to learn and you want to keep learning that you don't want to stop learning I I I think you could apply that in any other job because that that's what I've done Cole through throughout these last you know five years of work experience you know I would say hey what what's this teach me more about that why why do we do that how can we fix that process um I I am that person at work asking lots of questions um but it's it's it's kind it's kind of a beautiful program that H has created um one of their many um leadership programs and I'm I'm lucky to be here lucky to just keep learning every single day no absolutely I think uh it's good advice to I think that I'll I'll give to look at both right look at the fellowship like you did look at the the residency like you you also did and then you know kind of choose whatever program really fits for you the most right there's so many opportunities out there and it's important to choose the right one that you you really like and you've really enjoyed your time right at Methodist right yeah me Methodist Health Care system is a beautiful system so our our mission statement is serving Humanity to honor God by providing exceptional and cost effective Health Care accessible to all now you you already know I have a public health background so that accessible to all part resonates deeply with me and then with my finance background saying that we're cost effective um then just on a personal note serving Humanity to honor God is huge for me um that that absolutely adds more passion to me in this field and knowing that we're 50% for profit 50% not for profit so I know that at least 50 cents on the dollar is going to be put directly back into the community so it's it's kind of beautiful there I've I've really enjoyed my time do you have any specific questions about my time here at meth his Healthcare System absolutely I I have a few here and so one of the ones is about kind of the impactfulness of of projects that you've been involved with um you know how impactful do you think the projects have been do you think that you know one of the things that I guess a lot of people say that they're worried about when they go into an internship a residency Fellowship you know an LDL they're always worried about the projects being busy work right so how your with the projects are they are they Mission critical high value um absolutely since we're trying to open a hospital in November so I I directly know that if I don't do this we're not going to have that in our Hospital we're not going to be able to serve patients if we don't have that um they've brought me into into some of the equipment ordering processes so if I don't call the sales rep to get a quote for this piece of equipment we simply will not have it for the patient um every project that I've been brought on um has been very intentional for I I have a very wise CEO she's always looking for things that I lack in truthfully I didn't understand the equipment ordering process and so she like she or some someone else on the team will just identify that I don't understand something and whether they just want to tell me how it works or give me a project is up to them but it's usually give Rebecca the project half her try it out and see if she can accomplish it of course I ask questions along the way but I I think probably 95% of what I've done hasn't felt like busy work um the other 5% I think I think you probably feel a percentage of busy work at any job oh yeah um that's that's just kind of how it is there's things that are always repetitive because e even in healthcare it's one of the most dynamic environments oh yeah there there's still just things that you do every day there's some meetings that you attend every single day or every single week right um it's up to you to find if that's monotonous or if you can find the value in it yeah no of course of course I mean even the CEO right has uh a bit of busy work that she has to do every day so no that's excellent and then any recommendations just briefly um I really appreciate your time again but any any questions briefly or or um tips for those who are applying anything that those who are are interested in tending should be aware of yeah um if you're applying to um this res position to a fellowship or to just any job this is the advice that I give to people on LinkedIn all the time who kind of ask me this question the advice is is you should reach out to someone that's in that role ask them how they like it so you can you can check that box right now if you're interested in this Residency program you can check the box you've kind of heard a little bit about my experience um I'm always happy to talk more about it but you should also talk to someone that um has advanced from that role to either the next role or to somewhere else and ask them why they why they did that um and if they felt that they were prepared for the next role um so I did that when I was looking at this residency I talked to people who had Advanced um and also once you understand the residency I think that makes the interview process a little bit easier when you know what job you're applying for right so couldn't hurt but then I um now this is where this I I don't know how many people give this advice on LinkedIn but I sometimes actually recommend that people talk to people that either didn't get the position or chose to not move forward with the position so find someone that you know applied either didn't get the role or um that's just working somewhere else and ask them why now I I say that advice because I'm assuming we have some very um emotionally intelligent people on on this podcast and when you're ask when you're talking to someone that left the position you were in sometimes you have to take some of their advice with a grain of salt because some people leave because of relationship problems and you might not have those same relationship problems so be be mindful in some of the advice that you're hearing from someone that's an ex-employee um I've I've done that for um probably like the last three jobs talk to an ex-employee I've heard very interesting things but you also sometimes hear the truth so that's that's up to you if you want to take that thir step obviously the most valuable step is talking to someone that's in that position yes absolutely yeah very good advice and that's that last one's unique right um sometimes people are too afraid to mention that but it is really important right I I like to take to hear the good and the bad and then synthesize it together every organization has people who probably have something bad to say about it I mean that's just true you know these organizations have been around for hundreds of years right so um but it's good to be able to take both and and kind of synth decize what you want to move forward with so really important advice and thank you so much Rebecca for your time for coming on again on a Sunday afternoon I really do appreciate it and I hope that we can stay in touch and have you back on again as you you move up to your CEO or president position well I it's been wonderful getting to know you and thank you so much for having me on the podcast so I can help some people navigate their careers</p>