Latest / Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast / Jason Raidbard, Executive Administrator at UChicago Medicine and Biological Sciences

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Jason Raidbard, Executive Administrator at UChicago Medicine and Biological Sciences · Becker’s Healthcare - Clinical Leadership Podcast

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1:15
Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in
1:17
to this episode of the Becker's Health Care
1:20
Podcast.
1:20
I'm Erica Carbajal.
1:22
For this one, we're excited to be joined
1:24
by Jason Raybard,
1:26
executive administrator of UChicago Medicine and Biological
1:30
Sciences.
1:31
Jason, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so
1:33
much for being on.
1:35
Thank you for having me.
1:36
Yeah. To start off, do you mind just
1:38
sharing a bit more about your current role,
1:41
your organization, and then a little bit how
1:43
you got there on the background?
1:45
Sure. Yeah. I'll give you the Reader's Digest
1:47
version. So, Jason Raebard. I am currently the
1:50
Executive Administrator
1:52
over the Department of Ophthalmology at the University
1:54
of Chicago.
1:55
I've been here now about two and a
1:58
half years at this point. It's been a
2:00
wonderful experience. The University of Chicago is a
2:03
phenomenal academic medical center.
2:06
They do terrific research. They provide a terrific
2:09
education
2:10
and also
2:11
providing a variety of different clinical services. Mine
2:13
in particular is ophthalmology.
2:16
I myself have been in healthcare now
2:20
over 21 years.
2:22
Most of that 19 years at the beginning
2:25
or 18.5 thereabouts,
2:27
I was serving as either a practice manager
2:30
or a operations director
2:33
or some kind of administrative coordinator and usually
2:35
it was multi specialty settings. This is actually
2:38
my first
2:39
single specialty
2:40
endeavor
2:41
and
2:42
I enjoyed healthcare operations.
2:44
This role is a bit more strategic
2:47
and focused, a little bit more focused on
2:49
business
2:51
strategy. So, I'm enjoying that. I love the
2:53
operations. I love my operations people and I
2:55
don't think I'll ever be able to remove
2:57
fully my operations cap.
2:59
But it has been fun to be able
3:01
to do some different things as far as
3:03
the other parts of healthcare. So, that's just
3:05
a little bit about myself.
3:08
Yeah. Absolutely. Such a rich
3:17
or initiative from the last
3:20
year, including what you did and what the
3:21
results were? I know you said you've been
3:23
more focused on the business and strategy side,
3:26
so maybe something on that front.
3:29
Sure. Sure. Yeah. We've had a couple of
3:31
different
3:32
I wouldn't say there's just one.
3:34
But as far as the strategy goes or
3:37
we're focusing more on the business,
3:39
I think we've done a really good job
3:41
of
3:42
recruiting and expanding
3:44
at a time when we'll talk about this
3:45
a little bit later when there are shortages
3:48
of physicians,
3:49
not just in ophthalmology but throughout the country
3:52
and in all different
3:54
aspects whether primary care or specialty care. I
3:56
think we've really done a good job of
3:58
being able to,
4:00
when we've had physicians leave or retire,
4:03
not only be able to replace them timely
4:05
but
4:06
replacing them with really good quality people
4:08
and developing our 3 to 5 year strategic
4:11
plan for hiring,
4:13
developing a strategic plan to identify other markets
4:16
that we plan on going into.
4:18
I think that's been a successful endeavor. And
4:21
to put it on perspective,
4:24
relatively speaking, my current Chair, Doctor. Harry Prasad,
4:27
has only been in his role for about
4:28
a year. So, we've only had
4:36
initiatives
4:38
even though we both have been around longer
4:40
than that in this institution, he was in
4:42
an interim role prior.
4:44
There are some other things offshoots
4:47
related to that as far as initiatives, projects
4:50
that went well. And I think
4:52
all of them
4:54
whether we're talking about our development of our
4:57
first faculty handbook,
4:59
which is a comprehensive
5:00
30 plus page document that gives us different
5:03
operational and strategic procedures and explains to both
5:06
existing and new faculty and
5:09
staff of who does what and why,
5:12
we
5:13
we also have been able to
5:16
keep our employee engagement scores high.
5:19
So even though we've gone through
5:21
a good leadership transition,
5:24
even though with myself and and my chair,
5:26
we still have been able to keep engagement
5:28
scores, at least within our department, high.
5:31
And a lot of that has to do
5:33
with just
5:34
having
5:35
open conversations about virtually anything, just being easy
5:38
to talk to, being transparent,
5:40
listening. I think listening is very critical.
5:44
When we go back to the first project
5:46
I talked about when you're developing our strategic
5:48
3 to 5 year plan,
5:50
I walked into this role.
5:53
I didn't necessarily
5:54
have complete knowledge of the department
5:57
nor the market per se, at least in
5:59
ophthalmology,
6:00
but you ask questions. You ask questions of
6:02
people in your industry. You ask questions of
6:04
the people that you work with.
6:06
You're humble,
6:07
and you learn and then you can sprinkle
6:09
in your own expertise and thoughts and meld
6:12
that together to come up with, in this
6:13
case, a 3 to 5 year strategic plan.
6:16
I think that's really critical to be able
6:18
to do those sorts of things. There is
6:20
one other thing I do want to mention
6:21
and I think this is more of institutional
6:23
wide. The university just went through a transition
6:25
of updating its financial system.
6:27
We're using an Oracle system. And I think
6:29
everyone,
6:30
not just within my department, but all the
6:32
departments have done a fantastic job
6:35
of converting
6:36
from an existing system to new. And for
6:39
those of you who are listening who have
6:40
ever changed financial systems, changed electronic medical record
6:43
systems, whether it was 15 years ago from
6:45
paper to electronic or electronic to electronic,
6:48
those changes are not easy. But if you
6:50
have a plan
6:51
and you're transparent
6:52
and I even had a team meeting today
6:55
and we were talking about some of the
6:56
hiccups that we faced and we just said,
6:58
okay, let's have a pause. Let's see what
7:00
I can do to support you as a
7:01
leader.
7:02
And, alright, let's make some tweaks,
7:04
you know, talk to everyone openly about what
7:06
they're seeing and what they're dealing with and
7:08
how they're feeling,
7:09
it's
7:11
it's easy to get good results and success
7:13
out of that. It's easy to then at
7:15
that point see the engagement scores go up.
7:18
I think that's part of the recipe
7:20
for me is just being honest, transparent and
7:22
open. That's how a lot of these initiatives
7:24
were able to be successful.
7:28
Yeah. It sounds like really I think what
7:31
you said there just highlights
7:32
how
7:33
knowing what you know and being open about
7:37
not knowing what you don't know and transparent
7:38
with with your teams, how far that that
7:41
can really go in making progress on really
7:44
strategic goals and all the different areas.
7:47
With the 3 to 5 year strategic plan
7:49
that you that you mentioned on hiring,
7:52
Can you speak to, like, what the collaboration
7:54
looks like? Or who are the other core
7:56
leaders that that were involved or that you're
7:58
working with on that plan?
8:00
Sure. I mean, it it it's it's a
8:02
variety of folks,
8:04
and it depends if we're talking about expanding
8:06
here at our main campus or looking at
8:08
off sites. But you have,
8:10
our strategy team. Mark Helms is the Executive
8:13
Director of Strategy. He does a fantastic job.
8:17
It's starting with him. The prior Executive
8:20
administrator,
8:21
to me,
8:23
shared with me the documents that had been
8:25
carried over from the prior strategic plan. So,
8:27
looking at that, reviewing it with Mark and
8:29
his team, doing some analysis
8:32
through SG2 and,
8:34
you know, frankly,
8:36
talking to the staff, whether it's the Director,
8:38
whether it's the Nurse Manager getting their opinions,
8:41
whether it's data driven based on reports that
8:44
they're seeing,
8:45
Maybe
8:46
it's how long it takes for someone to
8:48
get into clinic or how many new patients
8:49
we can actually get in within 14 days.
8:51
We have
8:52
Tableau is the system that we use for
8:54
a lot of our analytics in the ambulatory
8:56
world. And using that is very helpful to
8:58
kind of determine where you're at, at least,
9:00
from
9:02
perspective.
9:03
So, being able to talk to the people
9:04
on the ground that
9:06
in the roles that I was in before
9:08
and engaging them because I can't tell you
9:09
the number of times that I have not
9:11
been included when I was a manager or
9:13
director. And you may be seeing something different
9:16
than the executive and the executive never engages
9:18
you. I've always said when I get into
9:20
one of these executive roles, I'm never going
9:22
to do that and I don't. So, you're
9:24
talking about that. You, of course, have your
9:26
own internal physician leadership, your chair, the vice
9:28
chairs. And then you also have
9:31
stakeholders in the dean's office,
9:34
stakeholders in the c suite of the health
9:36
system.
9:37
And you have open collaborative conversations about what
9:40
you're thinking about, and, you know, people will
9:42
be once they develop a trust with you
9:45
and that that takes a little time to
9:47
build up. But if you're open and vulnerable,
9:49
if you're transparent of what you're trying to
9:52
do, if you ask for help, that breaks
9:54
down a lot of walls in any system,
9:57
most any system.
9:59
And I think that lends itself to eventually
10:03
having a positive outcome as far as being
10:03
able to outcome as far as being able
10:05
to just not only collaborate on a document,
10:07
but then seeing it through over time.
10:09
If everyone is on board and there's a
10:11
trusting environment, there's an open environment, and there's
10:14
an environment where you can share ideas, you
10:16
can do almost anything.
10:18
And I think that was just kind of
10:20
my approach with helping, you know, our department
10:22
and my chair develop a strategy for the
10:24
next handful of years.
10:27
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, Jason.
10:29
If you're looking ahead, what are really the
10:32
biggest challenges that
10:34
you see within your role in health care
10:37
over the next few years? I know you
10:39
mentioned physician
10:41
workforce challenges at the beginning. So I'm not
10:43
sure if it's better or maybe something else
10:45
that you're seeing in your role.
10:47
Yeah. I I think I'll I'll if you
10:49
don't mind, I'll expand it to
10:52
if you don't mind, I think it's
10:54
health care in general, whether you're me in
10:57
ophthalmology in Illinois, in Chicago, or if you're
10:59
someone in San Diego with Multispecialty Surgical Services,
11:02
or you're out in Maine,
11:04
I think you are correct.
11:07
The lack of physicians,
11:09
and actually Scott Becker and I talked about
11:11
this. We did
11:13
a panel on operational excellence. This must have
11:16
been
11:17
maybe over a year ago with ILMGMA.
11:19
I'm a Board member with the Illinois
11:21
Medical Group Management Association, their Illinois chapter. And
11:24
we were talking about the number of slots
11:26
of residents and the support from CMS has
11:29
not changed in many, many, many years. But
11:31
the population, the older population now, the Boomers
11:34
that need
11:35
a variety of different pieces of care has
11:39
that
11:40
push or that stress on the health care
11:42
system has has gone up. So, we've increased
11:45
demand but not increased supply of physicians, right,
11:48
or even advanced practice providers and implementing some
11:51
of those changes in certain states or throughout
11:52
the United States hasn't caught up. And I
11:55
fear
11:56
that you're already seeing the effects today where
11:58
people are out of care for multiple weeks
12:00
depending on where they live in the country.
12:02
There is already scarcity in health care in
12:04
certain parts of the country.
12:06
And it's just going to be tougher and
12:08
tougher
12:09
not just to recruit
12:11
physicians, but to retain. Because I think a
12:14
lot of health systems and medical groups forget,
12:16
sure, you can recruit a physician or a
12:18
nurse practitioner or a PA,
12:20
but you have to keep them. And I
12:22
think, you know, that's going to be a
12:24
challenge for a lot of health systems and
12:25
medical groups and other medical institutions that don't
12:28
do that well.
12:30
If you don't know how to retain your
12:32
people,
12:32
physicians or otherwise, we're just going to focus
12:34
on physicians
12:35
and health care providers
12:37
providing direct patient care, you do a poor
12:39
job. That is going to be a big
12:43
cultural and financial stressor on your health system.
12:46
And given that we've got other challenges in
12:49
health care such as dwindling payments, whether we're
12:51
talking CMS or individual payers,
12:55
insurance payers,
12:56
or we're talking about the increasing costs associated
12:59
with newer technologies that we need to integrate
13:02
into our systems,
13:03
whether it's anything to do with our medical
13:05
records or equipment that we use in the
13:06
operating room,
13:08
those stressors add up to
13:10
a series of very difficult circumstances
13:13
to navigate.
13:14
And there will be some health systems, the
13:17
haves, that will be able to survive
13:20
and weather it if they have the right
13:21
culture, they have the right processes and procedures
13:24
and systems in place,
13:26
and they have nots. And and some of
13:28
the have nots will struggle because they lack
13:30
the capital,
13:31
or or perhaps they're so small, they don't
13:33
have the expertise or they just don't have
13:35
enough bandwidth to to do anything. And then
13:37
that's why we've seen so many
13:40
hospitals and health systems integrate or, in some
13:42
cases, fold.
13:44
And I fear that it's only gonna get
13:45
worse.
13:47
I am hopeful, though, that
13:49
perhaps in time, there'll be some policy changes
13:52
that will bring us some additional physicians and
13:55
maybe loosening
13:56
of bringing
13:58
physicians in a little bit easier by opening
14:00
more slots. It's a little pie in the
14:02
sky
14:03
and it may not take care of things
14:04
in the next couple of years. But I
14:06
certainly think of it in terms of
14:08
how can we ensure that health care is
14:10
stable
14:11
for the country, not just now because we
14:14
do need some things
14:16
taken care of now, but in the future
14:18
for for for someone that is
14:21
maybe just born yesterday
14:22
once they hit 60.
14:24
Decisions that occur now from a policy standpoint
14:26
of ensuring that we have the right amount
14:29
of medical supply, medication or physicians in a
14:31
country,
14:32
that's
14:33
impacted by for many, many years. That can
14:36
have multiple generations and decades impact.
14:38
So, time is of the essence. It always
14:40
has been of the essence. And I'm hopeful
14:42
things will get better. But those are the
14:44
challenges that at least I'm seeing right now.
14:48
Yeah. Absolutely. And it sounds like really
14:51
excelling on if you're not excelling on retention
14:53
right now, you know, now is the time
14:55
to really
14:56
level that up,
14:59
as as things
15:00
may get worse with with the physician
15:03
pipeline challenges. And I know with the residency
15:06
component too, hearing some leaders say that in
15:08
the past, especially in rural areas where they've
15:11
seen majority of residents
15:13
stay in that area. They're seeing that start
15:16
to shift. We're more and more starting to
15:18
leave where they did did those residencies as
15:21
well. So lots of challenges
15:23
around retention that that leaders are trying to
15:25
wrap their arms around right now.
15:28
Jason, next here, can you talk about obviously,
15:31
very challenging environment, I think, just generally across
15:34
the board for new executives and managers who
15:37
may be entering
15:38
the field of health care or just more
15:41
broadly entering leadership positions. So what advice would
15:44
you provide for them as they embark on
15:46
a newer journey in health care?
15:49
Sure.
15:50
So if we're talking about someone,
15:52
we'll we'll use the example of whether it's
15:55
a new practice manager, maybe they're fresh out
15:57
of fellowship or maybe it's a new executive
15:59
that is fresh out of fellowship and is
16:01
trusted in a Director or VP role, which
16:03
happens quite often.
16:05
You know, I think the challenge that I've
16:07
seen
16:08
I do a lot of mentoring through my
16:10
my alma mater, Lake Forest College, Northern
16:13
Illinois University where I went to grad school,
16:15
and then
16:16
through MGMA,
16:18
Medical Group Management Association. And what I what
16:21
I see is when I first got into
16:23
health care over 20 years ago, it was
16:25
a little bit different. We still people went
16:26
through fellowships and such, but
16:29
I think one of the things that was
16:30
unique back then is there were so many
16:32
private practices, and I worked for 1 for
16:34
6, 7 years. So you really learn every
16:37
aspect of how to eat what you treat
16:38
as far as a small business or medium
16:39
sized business, and you learn a lot of
16:40
aspects of survival and, and,
16:46
you know, I think that you still can
16:48
do that within health systems, but I think
16:50
you're not touching as much
16:53
as as would have when I look at
16:55
different managers that are new into their positions
16:57
or different directors or VPs that may be
16:59
fresh out of fellowship. I think there might
17:01
be a combination of not getting exposed to
17:03
all aspects. I mean, I remember back in
17:06
those days, I was picking up the phone
17:07
and calling to collect on claims which
17:10
you know, a lot of that has gone
17:12
away because everything's so automated now. But at
17:14
the same time, there are definitely issues where
17:16
you need to talk the payer about why
17:18
we're not getting paid for certain services or
17:20
timeliness and things. And I'm not sure how
17:22
much, you know, in that role as a
17:24
practice manager, how much today a typical practice
17:26
manager would experience that because they have a
17:28
whole rev cycle team deal with that. So,
17:30
for me, when I can go into different
17:32
meetings, I have a completely different perspective and
17:34
can almost reverse engineer the process
17:36
of what the rev cycle partners I have
17:39
deal with
17:40
and can help them construct solutions.
17:43
So it it it's something that if you're
17:45
newer in this role
17:47
or you've come out of fellowship or or
17:49
maybe you got a job and you were
17:51
the administrative coordinator or something like that,
17:55
wanna do your best to
17:57
expose yourself to as many areas.
18:00
It's easy to do that in operations.
18:02
Sometimes certain areas, if you know, if like
18:04
you're in a compliance area or quality area,
18:06
you might not be as exposed to multiple
18:08
areas. But let's say you did work in
18:11
a quality area. Let's say one of your
18:13
primary roles was to ensure the safety of
18:16
the hospital floors or the clinics based on
18:18
Joint Commission standards.
18:21
That person
18:22
should integrate themselves and get to know their
18:24
operations people to understand why the operations people
18:27
do what they do so that eventually when
18:29
you get to survey time, your team is
18:31
fully prepared because you as an internal surveyor,
18:35
if you will, a quality expert within whatever
18:38
health system we're talking about, hypothetically,
18:40
you can know that you have partners on
18:43
the operations side if we need to implement
18:45
last minute changes or shore up an area
18:47
that is a little bit weak.
18:49
And I've seen over the years quality people
18:52
do that.
18:53
There are people that I've worked with in
18:55
quality and I'm just using this as an
18:56
example. I don't mean this to use it
18:57
as a punching bag or anything like that,
18:59
where they've just kind of stayed in their
19:01
lane and they've just stuck to policies and
19:04
and not really gone beyond that.
19:06
And I think if you are willing to
19:08
integrate yourself,
19:10
whether it's that or you're in operations and
19:11
you're willing to understand how the registration process
19:14
works, how the rev cycle process works, even
19:17
how the prior authorization process works. You're willing
19:19
to get involved in details, heck, even how
19:22
marketing
19:23
works. I think you'll overall
19:26
be a more well rounded employee and a
19:28
well rounded administrator and executive.
19:30
And I think people will see that
19:32
and they'll appreciate your willingness to learn. I
19:35
can't tell you enough.
19:38
And I love this man for this professionally.
19:42
One of our our our deans, Dean Otto
19:44
here,
19:45
who's very high up within the dean's office,
19:47
great physician leader, the one thing I can
19:50
say about him is he always
19:53
asks thoughtful questions and has a genuine interest
19:56
in wanting to learn. Now, he's an experienced
19:58
leader,
19:59
experienced executive position leader,
20:02
but yet he still
20:03
asks the questions many years later.
20:06
No matter how small they may sound to
20:08
most people, it's important to him because he
20:10
wants to understand the why. Why is someone
20:12
experiencing a barrier? Why is someone experiencing
20:15
a certain reason why something is working or
20:17
not working?
20:18
That's impressive.
20:20
And if you are an existing
20:29
something that, yeah, I somewhat adopted but I
20:31
really enhanced by watching
20:33
him. And so I think if you see
20:34
good examples and you can find good mentors
20:36
from from up close or far, use them
20:39
to your advantage
20:40
to help you help other people, your patients
20:43
as well as your team, whether it's physicians
20:45
or staff,
20:47
or you're in your vendors for that matter.
20:49
And I think if you're able to implement
20:51
some of these things,
20:52
you become more well rounded
20:54
and more respected
20:55
And strategies like we talked about earlier, implementing
20:58
projects, become so much easier because they're already
21:00
challenging to start the day.
21:02
But at least you have a common bond
21:04
with people and support and trust. If you
21:07
have that,
21:08
people are gonna respect you, and it's gonna
21:09
be much easier to, integrate and implement.
21:15
Yeah. Jason, I think it's such a timeless
21:17
and tangible piece of advice there. And, you
21:19
know, things are always changing, and there's always
21:22
gonna be new people to lead and,
21:25
to learn from no matter how long you've
21:26
been in your role or with an organization.
21:29
Thanks for sharing that.
21:30
Before we close out here, can you share
21:33
how your leadership approach aligns with the values
21:36
of UChicago Medicine
21:38
right now?
21:40
Sure. I I mean, I think
21:42
one of the things that,
21:44
has been nice as far as
21:46
University of Chicago is
21:48
Dean Anderson,
21:49
who's been with the organization now, I think,
21:52
going on
21:53
a little over a year.
21:55
We've
21:56
changed our
21:58
mission, vision, and values slightly,
22:00
not abandoning prior mission, vision and values. But
22:05
we have 6 pillars
22:07
that talk about a variety of different areas
22:09
such as raising curiosity,
22:12
embodying equity, committing to excellence, growing together, making
22:14
a difference and taking ownership.
22:16
One of the key critical pieces
22:19
that he brought to the table that I
22:20
really enjoyed that I think hopefully has been
22:22
resonating throughout our conversation today in this podcast
22:26
has been being able
22:28
to include
22:29
and being able to reach out to different
22:31
stakeholders, different parties, different departments,
22:40
really
22:41
allowing the
22:43
Biological Services Division, which is where a lot
22:45
of the physician contracts are held and where
22:47
the physicians
22:49
provide teaching services and and work with the
22:52
health system. But both the health system and
22:54
then our Pritzker School of Medicine
22:56
really shifting the mindset of these are not
22:58
3 separate entities under an umbrella. These are
23:01
3 entities that need to work hand in
23:03
hand.
23:04
And I think if you can change your
23:06
culture, enhance your culture to move that direction,
23:10
I think that's not only going to be
23:12
successful for you in whatever you're trying to
23:14
do, in this case as a health system
23:16
and a university, but for me, it aligns
23:19
well because it means you're breaking down walls
23:21
and breaking down barriers and breaking down silos.
23:24
And that for me is what I'm all
23:25
about.
23:26
So, I love the openness and transparency that
23:29
is
23:30
derived and implied
23:32
in the new mission, vision and values. And
23:34
it's been quite successful since it started about
23:37
a year ago this past September I think
23:39
is when it originally started.
23:43
Jason, thank you so much for being on
23:46
today. It's been a pleasure to connect and
23:48
hear your thoughts on some key topics right
23:50
now in health care and learn more about
23:52
your leadership style and advice for upcoming leaders
23:55
as well.
23:56
Thank you. I appreciate your time in allowing
23:58
me to to contribute on the podcast.
24:00
Absolutely. And listeners, thank you so much for
24:03
tuning in. You can listen to additional episodes
24:06
of the podcast and hear from more leaders
24:08
by visiting the podcast page on our website
24:11
at beckershospitalreview.com.
24:13
Thanks, everyone.