Latest / Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast / Molly Moran, Senior Director of Ambulatory Clinical Practice and Workforce Development at Rush University Medical Center

Transcript

Molly Moran, Senior Director of Ambulatory Clinical Practice and Workforce Development at Rush University Medical Center · Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast

• 0:00
  - Welcome everyone to the Becker's
• 0:01
  Healthcare podcast series.
• 0:03
  My name is Mariah Mohammed.
• 0:04
  I'm a writer and moderator with Becker's Healthcare,
• 0:06
  and I'm absolutely thrilled to have
• 0:08
  with me today Molly Moran, senior Director
• 0:11
  of Ambulatory Clinical Practice
• 0:12
  and Workforce Development at Rush University Medical Center.
• 0:15
  Molly, it's very nice to have you on the podcast today.
• 0:18
  Very excited to talk with you.
• 0:19
  To get us started, would you mind please introducing
• 0:22
  yourself and telling us a bit about your background?
• 0:25
  - Absolutely. Thank you so much
• 0:26
  for having me on the podcast today.
• 0:28
  My name is Molly Moran
• 0:30
  and I am a ally prepared registered nurse
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  and the senior director of Ambulatory Clinical Practice
• 0:36
  and Workforce Development, as you said.
• 0:39
  And my background really is as a registered nurse
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  and I have worked
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  as a direct care provider in pediatrics at Freestanding
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  Children's Hospital as well as at an academic medical center
• 0:54
  and have really been in ambulatory over the last, uh,
• 0:59
  five and a half years.
• 1:01
  And over that time I have seen the evolution of ambulatory
• 1:06
  and most definitely the growth and
• 1:08
  and integration of technology into
• 1:12
  this new patient care area
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  and new in the sense of telehealth
• 1:19
  and telemedicine expansion.
• 1:20
  Not new in the sense that ambulatory
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  and community health really have been along for a long time.
• 1:26
  So, uh, my role really is to continue to build on
• 1:30
  what is already there and,
• 1:31
  and continue to help make way for the future.
• 1:35
  - Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much
• 1:36
  for giving us that background.
• 1:38
  And kind of speaking of building, in recent years,
• 1:41
  the healthcare industry has seen a growing emphasis on
• 1:45
  patient-centered care.
• 1:46
  Can you share some examples of
• 1:48
  how your organization is placing patients at the center
• 1:50
  of care delivery and any, uh, success stories that you have
• 1:54
  of how this enhanced patient sa uh, ification and outcomes?
• 2:01
  - Most definitely. So at Rush, I like
• 2:04
  to say our patients are our true north,
• 2:07
  and we really do believe that and, and live that.
• 2:11
  And it is integral to our decision making.
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  And so as I had shared, ambulatory and
• 2:18
  and community health have been around for hundreds of years,
• 2:21
  but in recent years we've seen an ability
• 2:23
  to integrate technology in new ways
• 2:26
  to really provide patient centered care in a way
• 2:30
  that is meaningful to the patient in a way
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  that more quickly connects patients with the right level
• 2:37
  of provider and the right level of, of care and,
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  and, uh, question resolution that they may have.
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  And so we've done a couple of things to really, uh,
• 2:49
  build on that from a workforce standpoint.
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  And one of those, um, really has to do
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  with assessing our current workforce
• 2:58
  and looking at what do we need to do either in terms
• 3:03
  of upskilling of current employees
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  or what do we need to think differently about for the future
• 3:09
  so that we can continue to build a workforce
• 3:12
  that is comfortable with this technology integration
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  and also still has the skills training
• 3:19
  and education necessary to provide that,
• 3:23
  that highest quality, safest patient care.
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  And through one of our biggest initiatives,
• 3:29
  it has been the Medical Assistant apprenticeship program.
• 3:32
  And one thing that we had identified was there is a real
• 3:36
  need to provide opportunities for individuals
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  who have an interest in working in healthcare a way
• 3:44
  to earn and learn.
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  And so we did a formal analysis of, uh,
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  medical assistance who had gone through various, uh,
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  programs in our community to see what some
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  of their barriers were to completing their education, uh,
• 4:02
  sooner or just challenges they encountered in general,
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  and really developed a program that was meant
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  to alleviate those barriers.
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  We have a wonderful educational partner in
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  with Harper College in Palatine, Illinois,
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  who has really helped, um, as the provider of,
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  of the formal education
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  and didactic helps meet the needs of our employees,
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  which in turn is helping to meet the needs of our patients.
• 4:32
  - Yeah, thank you so much for giving us that insight
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  and to delve more into the workforce aspect, um, of
• 4:39
  what you were just talking about.
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  What is your strategy for developing
• 4:42
  and maintaining a highly skilled healthcare workforce
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  capable of adopting those new technologies and care models?
• 4:51
  - That's a great question.
• 4:52
  So we have a multifaceted approach to
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  how we are addressing the medical assistance training
• 4:59
  and education once they are employed with us.
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  So as I mentioned, the first is really
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  through the medical assistant apprenticeship program
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  and through that program, as I mentioned, we've been able
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  to, uh, not just have a, a great educational partner,
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  but our employees also learn multiple different roles that
• 5:21
  also impact healthcare.
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  And so they start, uh, working as a clinic coordinator
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  and understanding, uh, all of the,
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  the moving parts that go into
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  not just checking a patient in,
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  but everything from insurance
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  and prior authorizations all the way up through working
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  as a medical assistant.
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  Once we have new medical assistants in our organization,
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  we actually really have the, the great benefit
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  of having a medical assistant educator on my team.
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  And she is a medical assistant
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  and has worked, um, as an MA in a number of different areas
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  at Rush as, as well as elsewhere over the last 15 years.
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  And her role primarily focuses on our new hires.
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  She is, uh, the facilitator of our new hire skills day.
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  She also facilitates our procedural class day.
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  So we recognize that so many procedures
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  that previously were done on inpatient units
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  in a same day surgery type setting.
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  Now that testing can be done in ambulatory
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  or in an outpatient setting, but requires the upskill
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  because it's not a, a traditional skillset
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  that's covered in a medical assistant program.
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  So things like, uh, surgical
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  or procedural support as well as the pre-cleaning
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  and high level disinfection processes.
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  And so her role really is to help our new hires with
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  learning not just our equipment,
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  but also learning those new procedures and processes
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  and then having that also translate to
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  having medical assistant preceptor classes.
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  And so recognizing the complexity of the patient population,
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  really wanting to invest in our MAs to give them the tools
• 7:12
  that they need to successfully precept those,
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  those new medical assistants in the clinic.
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  We also have recently implemented an annual competency
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  program for our medical assistants, similar in nature
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  to ones that, uh, healthcare organizations may be familiar
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  with for registered nurses or other licensed personnel,
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  but recognizing that there are high risk and,
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  and potentially problem grown procedures
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  that medical assistants now are directly involved in,
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  where a few years ago they may not have been.
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  And so it's really for us about creating a,
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  a wraparound program of support from the time
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  that an employee enters our organization through the time
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  that they are, are with us for their career.
• 8:02
  - Wonderful. Wonderful.
• 8:03
  Thank you so much for giving us that information.
• 8:05
  And Molly, before I let you go, the last thing I wanted
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  to ask you is can you discuss any new initiatives
• 8:11
  or projects that Rush is planning for the future
• 8:14
  and explain how these align
• 8:16
  with their overall strategic vision
• 8:18
  for ambulatory clinical practice and workforce development?
• 8:23
  - Absolutely. So much like other organizations,
• 8:26
  we're looking both at the short term as well as long term
• 8:30
  plans for workforce development.
• 8:33
  And many of the, the pipeline programs
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  or as I had shared,
• 8:37
  the apprenticeship programs really are an
• 8:39
  investment in the long term.
• 8:41
  However, what we have seen is
• 8:43
  that we do have positive outcomes in terms of retention
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  of individuals in the program progression
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  through the program, um, as well
• 8:54
  as seeing positive outcomes associated
• 8:56
  with our patient experience scores.
• 8:58
  And so really our, our job right now is
• 9:02
  to look at other opportunities to build similar programs
• 9:06
  for individuals who may want to
• 9:09
  try a new role in healthcare, um,
• 9:12
  or who may want to move from a nonclinical
• 9:15
  to a clinical role and really focus on that upskill
• 9:20
  of individuals in a way that they're able
• 9:23
  to not just have work-life balance, um,
• 9:26
  but that really work becomes also part
• 9:29
  of their formal education.
• 9:32
  - Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much, Molly.
• 9:36
  Uh, for those final thoughts, this has been an amazing
• 9:38
  and informative discussion.
• 9:40
  So again, I wanna thank you so much
• 9:41
  for coming on Becker's Healthcare
• 9:43
  and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
• 9:45
  - Thank you so much. - It's so important
• 9:50
  for leaders at the top of organizations to keep learning,
• 9:53
  stay sharp, grow their networks,
• 9:55
  help our audience better do this in a more simplified,
• 9:57
  personalized, and meaningful way.
• 10:00
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• 10:03
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• 10:05
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• 10:07
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• 10:10
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• 10:15
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