Class chats with Mount Nittany Medical Center administrators
In the classroom, Health Policy and Administration students are used to hearing about the challenges that hospital administrators face on a daily basis. HPA 101 students, however, recently had the opportunity to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Administrators at Mount Nittany Medical Center (formerly Centre Community Hospital) in Centre County treated the students to short presentations, followed by lively question-and-answer sessions and a “behind-the-scenes” tour. Topics ranged from the fierce competition hospitals are facing today from physician-owned medical groups to the ever-growing need to satisfy patients who have grown accustomed to shopping for health care.
The Mount Nittany administrators who shared their expertise with the students are Frank Speidel, M.D., vice president for medical affairs; Joyce Walls, associate director of clinical informatics; Bill Markley, director of patient accounts; and Kathy Dittmann, service excellence coordinator.
Speidel first spoke about his “evolution” from doctor to administrator and then praised the students for their fields of study. “We got to have people with talent and energy,” he said. Although Speidel said there are no “magic solutions” to the health care problems our country faces, he advised that students approach their careers with “healthy skepticism about the voice of authority.”
Shedding some light on the not-so-obvious aspects about hospital operations, Markley pointed out that the public too often compares hospitals to their doctors’ offices. “We are a Uni-Mart,” he said. “We are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” Added costs to an emergency room visit is because unlike a doctor’s office, the hospital has to keep the lights on, pay staff, and operate continuously throughout the day and night. He added that many people wrongfully consider the emergency room their primary care provider.
Walls told the students that when she tells people her title, puzzled looks soon follow. Informatics, she said, includes “methods and tools of information handling in clinical practice … I can make your life at the bedside easier. That is my job in informatics. It is to make the technology work for the clinicians.” She is proud that Mount Nittany is equipped with electronic medical records, which even allow doctors outside the hospital access to their patients’ records. Her department is also establishing a medication bar code system for the hospital.
Dittmann explained that hospitals today are experiencing a “customer revolution,” thanks in part to easily available online surveys and rankings of hospitals, as well as an abundance of both positive and negative word-of-mouth advertising. She said Mount Nittany is using this societal change to the hospital’s advantage. She said all employees of Mount Nittany must adhere to thirty-six behavioral standards and ensure that all patients are kept safe and receive quality, courteous care. “People have choices,” Dittmann told the group. “Society has changed.”
HPA 101 student Meecha Bechdel said she is grateful for the time the speakers made for her and her classmates.
“The very busy leaders of Mount Nittany hospital generously gave of their time and knowledge, which truly is a reflection of the level of commitment and compassion they have for their work and their community,” she said.
Bechdel also commented on how the experience was a refreshing change from the classroom environment. “There truly is no substitute for learning live and in person, interacting with professionals already on the job,” she said.