The UT Southwestern Medical Center Administrative Fellowship: Maggie Reyes

<p>hello everyone this is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy I'm joined by an administrative fellow Maggie Maggie please introduce yourself awesome no problem well first of all thanks so much for having me today I'm really excited to get to talk to your listeners and share a little bit about my experience but I could start us off with my background so I am originally from Long Island New York I grew up on the east coast and then um I went to school down in Tampa Florida at the University of South [Music] Florida so first I received my bachelor's in Health Sciences I did a dual concentration in biological sciences and Healthcare Management at that point I was kind of unsure whether I wanted to go more of the clinical direct Pro care provider route or if I want wanted to go more of the administrative route so I figured a dual concentration would be both to kind of have a hand in each world and make sure that I've taken all the necessary prxs for um you know postgraduate planning ultimately I decided that I wanted to stay on the administrative side of healthcare so ultimately I stayed at USF and pursued my masters in healthcare administration which I graduated back in May of 2023 now I'm currently as an administrative fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center here in Texas you know that that's excellent um the uh the interesting part too I think is is going right from you know that undergrad at the same institution to the grad school I've seen that at USF a few times it seems like people really enjoy the institution there right if if they're staying for that many years what caused you to want to H you know stay for grad school in addition to undergrad yeah absolutely um so I really wanted to stay um in Tampa first and foremost Tampa is a beautiful city there's a lot to do kind of um outside of the school as well it's a great place to live um but in terms of USF it's a really really excellent School uh the program itself at USF is great we have a wonderful staff of very engaged professors and um luckily for students that did their undergrad there's quite a bit of overlap between professors for undergrad coursework and graduate coursework so in my case I had an opportunity to take courses with some of the professors that teach the graduate program and kind of build some of those relationships early on and learn a little bit more about the USF mha program they also um have a Healthcare Management Student Association uh where undergraduate students are encouraged to attend meetings and learn a little bit more about the mha program so kind of through all of those different opportunities I was able to learn a bit more about usf's program and ultimately decided that that was where I wanted to pursue my Masters it's good advice for programs to you know invest in those associations that is really important so I appreciate you highlighting that East Coast is large right there there's a lot of schools between where you started where you ended up so what was the reason for going all the way down there to USF what Drew you there so uh in part it was due to family my sister and I are 18 months apart she's a year ahead of me uh she had gone down there first she went to the University of Tampa which is about 20 minutes from USF um and my grandparents had moved down a couple years prior so I had some family in the area uh but ultimately I was looking to escape the cold weather of New York uh and get my education somewhere where I can you know enjoy the warm weather while also getting a great education absolutely that's excellent very nice I I think those are great reasons to head on down and um yeah that's really great and so I think it's it's interesting because it's caused you to kind of have um experiences in a few different of the country right you've experienced east coast and then now of course you're in Texas before that though you know during your grad studies you took on a role of of a medical assistant and I want to ask you know was that a full-time part-time and and either way how did you manage that with your your Graduate Studies yeah of course so um I had decided pretty early on into my mha career that I would have um a little bit more of a robust education if I had some experience in healthcare and it's one thing to kind of learn about healthare protocols and processes in a textbook and kind of conceptualize what it's like but I think it's a whole different experience once you kind of jump in and immerse yourself in those types of experiences so in my case I had applied around to a couple different practices um and I ended up getting a job as a medical assistant in private practice paid management um I was really transparent with the operations manager when I started that um my goals were more administrative but I think um as an administrative leader one day it's really important to understand um what Direct Care Providers go through and have a solid understanding of how Clinic operations work and uh some of the you know stressors that happen in a direct care environment so I was more than happy to kind of jump into one of those opportunities and um ultimately I stayed as a medical assistant for about nine months I had an opportunity to work with three different pain management providers and occasionally float on over to the primary care practice and work with a primary care provider so it really gave me um I think a a great supplement to my education that I was receiving at the University of South Florida I agree I think that my time as a medical assistant in neurology was was very valuable of course you lasted about two or three months longer than I did there I it was a good role I also transferred more to the administrative side and but it was a good it was a good role how clinical was what you did as a medical assistant can you describe some of the duties a little bit and then also how you got trained so if if I was maybe in your position in grad school again and I wanted to get that medical assistant you know license or or what what is required and how did you do that so in the practice that I was at um you were not required to be licensed to become a medical assistant majority of the training was um happening on the job so I was able to transition in pretty smooth um in that particular practice um I trained for about 3 weeks before I was feeling confident to uh see patients on my own at that particular practice the uh scope of medical assistance was pretty large um we typically would you know call patients uh help check them into their appointments escort the patient back into the exam room we would um pretty much go through the history in physical since their last appointment uh if it was a new patient it would be a little bit more extensive if it was a uh returning patient it would be a little bit uh more brief then we would um do basic vitals such as you know blood pressure temperature things like that and then we would take that information and report back to the physician join the physician back in the room with the patient and then kind of function as a scribe so it was really nice because you got to do um some of the Hands-On clinical work such as vitals um helping with injections things like that that a typical medical assistant would do but we also functioned as SC scribes as well so it was nice kind of having you know two types of experiences kind of combined into one that particular practice also had the medical assistant um responsible for all of the scheduling so I was able to you know do procedure scheduling or a schedule for um future appointments and things like that um and also after Clinic was over we would work on you know help out helping out with uh procedure authorizations um and any other side tasks that are pretty standard for medical assistants so it was nice to kind of have both of those experiences combined into one and then the operations manager since I was transparent with her from the start that I was really interested in healthcare administration she gave me opportunities to kind of work on projects with her that are with more of an administrative focus on the side so once I was finished with my tasks for the day I could stick around and help out with different projects that were going on such as you know Joint Commission preparedness for ambulatory Surgery Center and things like that so it was really nice kind of getting um a well-rounded experience while I served as a medical assistant um and also our operations manager was very flexible since she knew I was in school so she allowed me to have some flexibility over my schedule so I was able to work three days a week and balance that with my full-time course work I uh I I laughed a little bit when you mentioned the jco preparedness for those ambulatory centers because I remember that uh that kind of a nightmare a a little bit we had uh one of the instances we had put signs up for covid for masking but they were paper and jco as you might know hates paper in the clinic because blood gets on and all these things so it was a it was a nightmare so that's that's uh very interesting do you feel like because you actually got to see how an Ambulatory Care Center was run behind the scenes that it give you a better appreciation for Ambulatory Care especially since there's usually a big focus on Hospital you know medicine and Hospital Administration and that's a lot of people think of they don't always think of the ambulatory side did it give you an appreciation for it absolutely um I definitely developed um a greater affinity for Ambulatory Care working through that experience I also realized um how convenient it is for patients to be seen um at you know Ambulatory Surgery centers and outpatient surgery centers in general um from a patient perspective um at least the ones that I had spoken to they had always preferred to go to the Ambulatory Surgery Center versus having to go to the hospital um unfortunately a lot of hospitals have to charge for parking or you have to valet your car or you know even just the transport of getting there can be kind of a fiasco if you will versus an Ambulatory Surgery Center typically the parking is a a lot more straightforward uh patients can easily flow in and out of the facility they don't have to you know travel through the admission process process of a hospital and you know navigate their way all the way back to a hospital o um and honestly the turnaround times are a lot quicker um in some cases at Ambulatory Surgery centers so patients can be in and out and not necessarily have to dedicate as much of their time and as much as their caretaker time as well so I really uh enjoyed that experience and I think I learned a lot I think there's less fear too maybe because you like my dad has like PTSD about the hospital right like he has actual you know traumatic uh symptoms about the hospital and so I think that that that's a part of it and I know insurance companies have been trying to leverage that as well for things like colonoscopies and routine endoscopies they're trying to you know require that patients go to these Surgical Center so I appreciate you're bringing that up um you you had you know a year or two of experience right when you were finishing up your mha as you said that that's why you got that experience is so that it would add to your the value why did you shot chose to then pursue an administrative Fellowship what got you on that search process yeah absolutely um so in part it was due a bit to the experience that I had working as a medical assistant so I worked for nine months and then I had transitioned into a different role um as the assistant to the operations manager at that clinic um and in that role I really had an opportunity to um wear lots of different hats as you often do in you know smaller practices so you know some days I was the supervisor some days I was HR some days I was marketing recruiting accounts receivable uh credentialing uh Insurance verification it really just depended on the day and kind of the needs of the clinic in that moment um and I was happy to kind of say yes to any task or assignment or project that came my way because ultimately it was a great learning experience and I felt really supported by the operations manager and I could ask her any question that I had and um always felt confident that she would be able to kind of help and guide me through any issue that I came through so having that experience um it almost felt like a mini Fellowship because I got to you know try a whole bunch of different things and we a lot of different hats so coming from that um and then learning more about Fellowship opportunities I had figured hey if I can learn this much in a you know small Private Practice imagine how much I could learn um doing a similar type of experience where I do you know I spend time in a lot of different areas but just at a health system so that was definitely one of the factors that contributed to why I wanted to pursue an administrative Fellowship I also have some friends who had graduated from the USF mha program a couple years before I did and um had pursued Fellowship opportunities um and who had really spoken to the value of a fellowship and I thought it would just be another great opportunity to kind of try out a lot of different things and as an early careerist who didn't have really any experience in the inpatient setting I thought it would be a great opportunity to see both inpatient outpatient um and in the case of UT southwester and some academic um and research components as well how many fellowships when you started doing that process because I know it's pretty extensive right we've talked to you know about 50 or so and all of them have agreed that it's a pretty extensive process so how many did you decide to apply to and why did you you know choose that number so I ultimately applied to 14 fellowships um I did when I had initially kind of combed through and created my initial Excel document of all the opportunities I could potentially be interested in um in all honesty it was closer to 20 but um I decided to narrow it down a little bit and be a bit more realistic for me in terms of um you know opportunities what are my priorities here I think it's important when you're applying for fellowships to kind of um have a set of criteria that's important to you for me um a big criteria was geographic location I love Tampa it's a great City but after being there for six years between my undergrad and my masters I was kind of ready to try something new and expand my horizons a little bit so I knew I wanted to leave the Tampa area but again um I was not ready to run back to the cold of the East Coast so ideally I was you know looking for systems that would be in the South um and I didn't want to be too far from my family so I didn't want to go all the way to the West Coast so geographically I was somewhat limited and I was targeting cities that I could see myself being happy outside of work as well because I think that's really important um especially with a fellowship if you're going to move somewhere and potentially you know put down Roots somewhere I think it's important that you're happy with your life outside of work as well um so I based my decision heavily on geographic location and then I had realized that I wanted to work for an academic Medical Center as well um I really feel strongly about the tribe parate mission that a lot of academic medical centers have I really enjoy the teaching environment of academic medical centers too um at least in the case of UT Southwestern um we're a teaching hospital and that culture of continuous learning and education spans far beyond our clinical staff um we have lots of non-clinical programs um that are centered around education such as our administrative fellowship program um and it's really an environment where everyone is you know happy to set some time aside if you'd like to talk through a problem or ask for advice or even just learn a little bit more about what they do so as an early careerist who was you know just starting out and looking for that next opportunity uh postgraduation I thought an academic Medical Center would be a really great place to land I have quite a few questions based on this this excellent information you've given us and I think it'll be really helpful to other people who are looking for Fellowship so um one of the first ones you explained well why you why you like the academic Medical Center but how did you figure that out because you know I would never have known the difference five years ago right where I was how did you figure that out yeah absolutely uh so I set aside some time kind of as I was uh in that summer between first and second year and I was you know starting to fill out those applications um I spent some time researching the different types of Institutions that are out there um you know what is an academic Medical Center the difference between an academic Medical Center and maybe your traditional hospital um and just doing some research on my own to get a better understanding of exactly what um an AMC is and what some of the benefits for working at an amcr and you know all of those different things so a lot of it was kind of done through um independent research and then figuring out kind of what resonated with me when I was in grad school I also had an opportunity to volunteer a bit um at mfet Cancer Center um and while I was there a family member of mine had actually been a patient at Moffit and um was enrolled in a clinical trial and thankfully he had fantastic um outcomes through this trial but kind of seeing that uh research uh translate into practice at Muffet um kind of sparked a bit of an interest in clinical trials and in healthcare research in general so that also kind of geared me towards an academic Medical Center um with a focus on research because um after seeing that incredible journey that my family member had had um I knew that I would love to work at an institution that's also you know having a similar impact in the community happy that your family member is is doing well and and I've heard you're you'd be the third fellow that has mentioned mafit as being something that has kind of uh altered their career path and so one of them I think went to work uh at the uh Dana Farber Cancer Institute and she was a fellow there so it it seems like a I I've heard that before which kind of you know is very interesting uh so great reasons on that and great advice too that you know when you're doing a research there's multiple things you need to research including the type of medical center and so I really appreciate you highlighting that that's excellent advice uh back to the the Dallas area right talking about the city when you were looking at Dallas right outside of work what are some things that that Drew you to it that made you think you know I want to spend my next you know two three and maybe even longer there yeah absolutely um so Dallas in general is a growing city so there's a lot to do um when I was looking um at Fellowship opportunities and I had kind of centered in on the Dallas area a little bit I had learned that Dallas is one of I believe only 10 cities in the US that has all four pro sports teams so if you are a sports fan um there is plenty to do and watch around here um kind of outside of that um Dallas really has a very diverse population here as well which I enjoyed um it's very popular among early careerists as well um a lot of people will relocate here you know after finishing their studies for work lots of uh large corporations and companies are headquartered down here in Dallas so it definitely um attracts Talent from all throughout the nation which was nice um there's lots of you know Young professionals who are looking to build their career here in Dallas um from a healthcare standpoint um there are lots of fantastic uh institutions here in Dallas so I knew it would be um a great place to kind of build my career and a community that I really wanted to get involved with since there are so many opportunities here um and I'm also a bit of a foodie myself um so I loved the pretty expansive restaurant scene that we have here in Dallas any type of qu that you could really want we have um and then there's also a mix of you know art and nature and uh museums here in Dallas as well so no matter really what your interest area is you can definitely um you know find what you're looking for here in Dallas also big um it's a very popular city for concerts and live music as well U lots of artists come through Dallas either on their way to Austin or um you know heading somewhere throughout the country so any type of music you'll be able to find an artist performing here so overall there's tons to do here in Dallas that is a great rundown I I I have never been to Dallas but I'm gonna have to go and check it out especially with those that the four sports teams I think that's a good point because it really does change the environment of the city when there's so much action going on and people get really wild so that's uh that's excellent I appreciate you sharing that and and you know it helps other fellows who might be interested in that kind of an active lifestyle to go to it or others to avoid it of course that's not what they're looking for yes yes so I appreciate that and then so talking about you know UT specifically UT Southwestern specifically how has your experience been there what is the culture like and can you just give us an overview too on on the fellowship structure you said it's an 18month but you were also talking earlier about how there are some interesting like interim manager Arrangements that go on so if you can just give us an overall rundown that'd be great yeah absolutely so I can talk a little bit about the structure of our program and then I can give you um how my experience has been so far so we are an 18-month fellowship program so how our program works we have 14 of our core operational rotations that all of the fellows complete so um those can range from you know transplant um Women's Services non- funicle Support Services the cancer center neurosciences um there's an entire range um which focus on our operational service lines and then towards the end of our fellowship uh we each get to go back and choose an elective rotation so you can either choose to Circle back to a rotation that you've already completed if you really enjoyed it and you want to spend some more time there and learn a bit more or you can choose to rotate to an area that's outside of our uh core operational areas so for example if you wanted to rotate through development or HR or strategy or something kind of outside of the traditional operational realm you can absolutely do that as well so that's a really great opportunity that we're given as fellows and then the last portion of our fellowship we do an interim management experience and that is typically three months in length and uh each of the fellows is placed in a vacant either manager or supervisor position somewhere within the health system and that's a really great opportunity for fellows to get to try out people management and ultimately decide if that's something that they'd be interested in pursuing post Fellowship um the idea for interim management kind of stemmed from feedback from our steering committee and from some of our preceptors that we have at UT Southwestern that work with fellows pretty often typically after Fellowship they would report you know fellows have great um institutional specific knowledge and they have you know great experience and they've built you know Wonderful connections throughout the institution and great technical skills but one thing that the fellows are you know have historically lacked was people management experience so when they transition into a people management type of role um you know they're they have a bit of a learning curve there so to try to fill that Gap they built in that inim management experience that way you can try out your hand at people management before you finish the fellowship and also while you're still in that supported environment we also we're completing that experience we have uh weekly one-on-ones with our director so that way we can you know frequently touch base with her and kind of talk through any um experiences that we may be going through as interim managers she had been a clinic manager herself prior to her current role so she has lots of great Insight um to help fellows who are kind of in that you know first people management type of experience um our program also assigns each of the fellows to mentors Within the institution um so it's great to have that uh people management experience and have two more seasoned uh individuals in the institution who are uh people managers to kind of bounce ideas off of and ask for advice if you may need that wow that is very comprehensive and I I appreciate that they really seem to really care about the outcomes like that's that's I mean not that other fellowships don't right but the fact that they're really making making these adjustments and they're putting so much resources behind it seems like they care about you being there long term is that something that you felt during your experience oh absolutely um I think that's one thing that really stands out about our fellowship program U the word I would use to describe it would be intentional there's tons of intention put behind our fellowship program from even the most basic like the order in which we complete our rotations like it's built so that you start with some of the most foundational so that way as you continue to rotate through you can kind of build upon the experiences that you've already had and the connections that you've already built um I think a big reason why our fellowship is you know able to improve year over-year and you know we're constantly working to make it the best experience possible for fellows um is because of our program director her name is Sasha minishort she was a past fellow herself and she has done a lot of the work in kind of redesigning our fellowship program and building upon it year after year she's um the director of University Hospital program operations so she um oversees the administrative fellowship program and our administrative internship program she also functions um to support our chief operating officer who's the executive sponsor of our program um but in that specific role it's really really nice at UT that U the fellowship program is actually built into her job description at a lot of other places I've heard that Fellowship programs um are kind of an additional uh resp responsibility of someone not necessarily built into their job description but at UT um they really value the fellowship program so it has been you know formally built in that way our program director has the you know the time the resources um and the energy to be able to you know really dedicate herself to the program and to constantly improving it that's a really good point and and I appreciate you giving that advice to other programs too on how they can improve because you don't necessarily want the fellowship to be like a hot potato among the executives right where everyone is in a crisis and and you also don't want it to be the first thing that gets trapped when uh the hospital goes through a hard time right and and that does happen and so I think that's excellent advice for the system uh from the beginning onboarding process and this will be my my final question for you I do appreciate your time very much um what have they done to make you feel at home I guess is the best word is there anything other programs can do to imitate or other people can do you know your your co-fellows to make you feel at home there that we could you know maybe improve on absolutely um so from the start uh UT in general the culture is very very welcoming um I'm not sure if it's really a Texas thing in general uh the the reputation of people in Texas is that they're extremely friendly and I have found that to be true at least in my experience and especially at UT Southwestern um from the start they the leadership team that we work with um has made it very very apparent that they are you know very excited to have fellows and that they really value the program um we're given tons of support um lots of touch points uh with our program director with our um preceptors and also among our cohort we have um bi-weekly meetings as a cohort to just kind of touch base and say hey you know what's going on is there anything that I can do to support you you know what are you guys working through right now we can also give each other advice on hey I just completed this rotation this is what you can expect or this was a really great experience that I had here you should try to do that when you go there so it's nice H we had lots of opportunity to kind of build that camaraderie amongst each other um fellowships are you know often kind of a a niche job in the job market so it's really great to have other people that are kind of going through the same experience that you are and who can really relate to some of the you know challenges of being a fellow um so it's really awesome that UT gives us um a lot of time and support um and also gives us opportunities to bond amongst each other when we had first started in the onboarding process um they had a wonderful lunch in for the fellows they invited all the members of our steering committee who we had interviewed with uh when we were going through the application process many of which now serve as mentors to us um they were they gave us a very extensive campus tour so we got to spend pretty much an entire day just trying to find our way all around campus our campus is about a mile by a mile so it's quite quite large so definitely uh was important to make sure that we covered all of our ground um but overall UT Southwestern did a fantastic job of welcoming us into the institution it's also helpful as we're in 18-month fellowship and we have six months of overlap with our senior fellows as we call them so they served as you know informal mentors for us and a great resource as we were getting you know oriented and onboarded to UT to kind of answer any of those questions that we had they made themselves available you know whenever we needed them and made sure that we were frequently touching base uh we also have a bi-weekly meeting um as a fellow cohort with our program director and in those meetings we will typically you know do a round robin everyone will share you know what's going on in their slice of the institution and then we'll also be able to um feature different guest speakers from the institution uh who we may not typically interact with in our operational rotations and then we'll also have opportunities as fellows to present on topics that are assigned by our program director so overall lots of support and uh we were really given a very warm welcome into UT which I'm very grateful for wow yeah a lot of investment and and a lot of advice uh for other programs people who might be looking to start a new fellowship program as well I really do appreciate that so it sounds like an a just an awesome place to to be a fellow so uh I definitely encourage people to apply I'm sure you guys probably get lots of applications though but we do encourage people to apply thank you so much for coming on this evening Maggie I think you're in Central Time right yes I am it's just 5:30 there right now so just the end of the day so I do really really appreciate it and I hope you have a rest you know good even and and we can you know stay in touch and have you back on in the future great thank you so much and thank you again for you know inviting me on to your show and allowing me to speak with your audience if anyone has any questions or wants to further discuss the fellowship program at UT I'd be happy to jump on a call or answer any emails or messages that you may have</p>