Description of the video:

Good afternoon or
good morning, whatever time zone you are in,
and welcome. Thank you for spending time
with us today learning about the Kelly
Physician MBA Program. My name is Susanna
Eastwick. I serve as the director of the Physician
MBA Program, and I'm joined today by
Dr. Michael Kelly, who is a graduate of the
program, recently into his new role as CMO of
the Greenville Market for Bonsors in South
Carolina, which I'm not sure I'm saying
that right, so he'll probably correct me
later. What I'm going to do this morning is
walk through kind of a nuts and bolts, an
overview of the program, and then we'll turn
it to Michael to share his perspective on the
program. I, of course, am also joined in
the room by Felicia Morris, our admissions
coordinator who many of you may have chatted
with already, and our awesome AV and studio
staff who are in the background making
everything great. So let's start out with the
question of sort of why an MBA for physicians.
When you do your research, you'll see
there's MBA programs everywhere, right?
There's a proliferation of schools who can teach
you the language of business. But we are
quite unique in that we are a physician-only
MBA, and our focus is in the intersection of
business and medicine. So why do we have
this? Well, what we know is that healthcare
is undergoing constant change, right? That's
the one thing we can all speak to is that
change is the one constant. And for us, We
believe that physicians need to be at the
front of leading that change. You are the
ones who best understand patient care, and we
want to see you in the leadership roles
driving effective change across the healthcare
industry. But what we know is that, and also
what we know is that business and medicine
are not exclusive. And in much of your
medical training, you didn't get the tools
you needed to be that effective change agent
in terms of marketing, finance, operations, leadership. all of
the pieces that an MBA program can give
you, you don't always have the confidence
to know what those pieces are because
that was not part of your training. So our
mission is that we're trying to change
healthcare through physician leadership.
So why come to Kelly? Now you understand
what we're doing, but why would you spend
this time with Kelly? Well, it's of course
important to know that we're one of the
top 20 business schools in the U.S. and we
have the number one ranked online MBA
and have consistently for more than a decade
now. And all of our other programs are
consistently high ranked. You don't see
a ranking on this slide for the physician MBA
because there isn't one. There are so
few of us across the country. You just know
we are the top one because we're the
only one at a ranked business school. Why
is ranking important? Not just important
because it increases the awareness of your degree,
right? When people know that you have a
degree from kelly they know that it's a quality
degree but it you know that reputation
is key but it also is important because it
brings in a very high quality of faculty to
the program because when you're at a ranked
business school you have requirements of research
that your faculty are required to do
as well as consulting work they must have
their teaching at the top of their game and then
additionally it brings in a quality of
students that come into the classroom so you
know coming with us, especially when we're
the top-ranked online MBA program, you can study
with us with confidence knowing we are at
the best at what we can do and we maintain
integrity and quality at the core of everything
we do. So our faculty are both renowned
experts in their area, but also skilled
teachers. And one of the things that makes our
faculty distinctive, and you can find a list
of our faculty and a profile of each one of
them on our website, is that they understand
health care. Many of them are doing research
or consulting work or even joint appointments
across our school of medicine or our
school of public health. And then they also
understand you and your time demands and your
learning style. There's actually studies that
have been done on how do you deliver CMEs
effectively for the long-term retention of
knowledge and practicing physicians. And what
they found is if you follow a learning
cycle where you first recognize what the physician
already knows, then introduce the new
knowledge, give you the opportunity to apply
that knowledge and then reflect on it before
starting again, that increases the retention.
And it's exactly how you've been trained,
right? The laying of hands. So start the
knowledge, have you practice it, and then you
reflect back. And our entire modality is built
around the physician learning style. And
it's what our faculty are experts in. And
because our faculty are also teaching in our
online MBA program, they really understand the
best practices around online learning and
in-person experiences that applies that
application-based method. Here's a quote on the
screen from Dr. Cheryl Wolf, who graduated
from our program as an OBGYN. She was in
private practice when she started the program,
and now she's the vice president for women's
health at a large healthcare system in
Wisconsin. And her quote, these professors
are experts in their fields, and they opened
my eyes to a whole new way of looking at
medicine and how the business of medicine
shapes actual health care. So why choose this
program? Well, when I talk about how you
choose an MBA program, I often talk about four
things. You look at who's teaching the
courses, what are the courses, who's in the
courses with you, and how are they taught in
terms of what's the modality. And we exceed
it all at levels, right? We have quality faculty.
We have a unique curriculum. We're
physician-only, and we have the flexibility
needed for physicians. So breaking down the
second one in terms of our curriculum, what's
distinctive about our program is that,
and I always say, look at all the MBA programs
you're looking at and print out their
curriculum and sort of highlight what classes
most apply to what you're looking to learn.
And you're going to find when you do that,
our program always wins that game. Because
what we've done is we've looked across
the spectrum and said, what do physicians most
need to know to lead the industry moving
forward? And then we designed a curriculum
around the answer to that question. And so
you'll find we're a standard MBA program.
So we have the core curriculum that you
would expect in an MBA program, accounting,
finance,
marketing, management, you name it. But
what's different is that it's taught from
best practices. So what we do is we take
best practices from all industries and then
translate it into healthcare. So half of
your cases come from healthcare and half
do not. So that you're looking at, you know,
how does Apple market the iPhone? And then you
can translate that into how do I market
my healthcare services? And ultimately, what
we're talking about is not just how healthcare
currently works, but how it should work. And
then not only in our core, that's in our
core MBA courses. And then we've designed a
series of courses that are specialized just
in our program, things like our Lean Six
Sigma Greenbelt, our healthcare analytics, the
anatomy and physiology of the healthcare
system, our executive coaching, our global
healthcare immersion, and so forth. And we'll talk
more about those as we go. But one of our
focuses back to the physician learning style
is that we use a problem -based learning approach.
So in almost every class, we're going to
ask you to take what you're learning and
take it into your organization and practice
it. And so you'll do a project in process
improvement and in analytics and in finance and
you name it. There's a project in almost
every class. And we'll also use consulting
projects where you work with a third party, giving
them advice on their strategy and growth.
We're going to constantly bring in expert
speakers and panelists from across the industry
so that you see some of those best practices
and happening. And obviously, like all
business schools, we'll be using the case-based
method, which allows for that constant
discussion of how best can we do this. And we
have what's a very high buzzword in higher
education, this experiential classroom. So that
means, for example, our physicians studying
this summer in the law course, they're going
to be going to the federal courthouse and
talking with a judge magistrate about how
they adjudicate health care fraud. It's
going to be constantly experiential on let's take
the theory of what we're talking about and
let's apply it in the situation. And it's very
much a program designed around physicians.
So you come in with a cohort of physicians.
We start every August. And your cohorts
typically somewhere around 35 to 40. And you
follow what's called a lockstep program. So
that means you take all your courses in sequence
together. And the sequence really
builds sort of like a wedding cake, a tiered
approach. And so every class is a prerequisite
to the next course. And it keeps you
flowing through the program. One of the huge
benefits is being in a room of like-minded
individuals. A lot of people say to me, yeah,
but I think I want to go into a non
-physician-only MBA program because I want to
learn from people who are in other industries.
And I always say, okay, but you already
speak the same language in our classroom. And
then together as a like-minded individual,
you learn the language together. And
so nobody in the room is already a Microsoft
Excel guru, right? Or has all the marketing
terms down. And there's never a feeling
where you're like, oh my gosh, I'm behind.
I don't know anything. Everybody's learning
in the same mindset. But additionally, being
in a physician-only classroom means that
you're learning from one another the best
practices that everybody's tried. You'll find,
and our cohorts break down about a third are
full-time practicing, another third are sort
of practicing with a foot in the administrative
role, right? So sort of half and half.
And then another third are what you would say,
full-time administrative. And so being in a
room like that is incredibly diverse,
actually. We'll have 35, 40 different specialties
in the room, people from all different
practice environments and geographic locations
and so forth that allows for you to really
have that diverse of a conversation of like,
okay, plastic surgeon in California, how
is this payment model working for you versus
a GI doc in Maine and really comparing and
contrasting. And we use team-based peer learning
as a way to really further that learning
stone from like-minded individuals. You're on
steady teams of four to five physicians each,
and then you change teams every six
months throughout the program doing projects
together so that you really further that small
group learning. It is an incredibly flexible
delivery model. We'll hold classes in person
online, synchronous, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays
at 8 p.m. Eastern. But if you're not
able to attend live, they're recorded and you
can watch them on your own schedule. And the
rest of the work is fairly asynchronous
in the sense that you can do it on your own
time. And it's intended to be able to be done
in sort of bite-sized chunks as well as to
work ahead. So our faculty always stay two
weeks ahead of you. So you can still take
vacation in the program, go to conferences, et
cetera, by managing your time. And we really
think about efficiency because we know time
is your most precious commodity. And so we
think, okay, you know, when a professor is
thinking about a case, you know, the perfect
case might be 36 pages, but the case
that is just as good and hits all the
major points might be 18 pages. And
they'll choose the 18 page course because
they're thinking, how do I make sure
you get the content while being efficient
in our time? I mentioned already
the importance of our applied learning
courses. We do executive coaching for the duration
of the program. So we start out with a
leadership immersion course. That's five days
here in Indianapolis. That's August 11th
through the 16th this fall. And at the end
of that course, you get paired with your
executive coach who then walks alongside you
for the duration of the program, really helping
you think through everything you're
learning and how you're leveraging that in
both your career, your leadership style, your
approach, you name it. Another distinctive
course is our global healthcare experience,
which goes abroad and looks at healthcare
systems outside the U.S. and best
practices from those countries and those
systems and how we might leverage those best
practices here in the U.S. And so to date,
we've been all across the globe, India,
Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, France, England, Italy, the Czech Republic,
the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Cuba, of course,
which we hope to get back to again one day.
Our plans for 2026 are currently New
Zealand and Australia. So our destination
changes, and that course is an optional course.
It's open to you both as a first-year
student, a second -year student, and then
also to our alumni. It's a continuing, it's
a CME-based course, and so our alumni
also take it with you. We have a health care
policy experience, which is a required
experience in October of the second year where
you go to D.C. and are immersed in the
language of health care policy. And really our
focus there is where could the physician
voice better be inserted? Because I'm sure as it
comes to no surprise to any of you, the
physician voice is not prominent in health
care policy. We have a capstone experience that
ends your curriculum. And the Capstone
experience is really an immersive, we call
it experiential, that allows for you to
apply everything you've learned in the program
to date into a project, a strategic project
that you either do as an entrepreneurial
project, an intrapreneurial project, meaning inside
your organization, or a consulting project
that is comprehensive of the program.
We also offer an optional class that studies
the career management and professional
development tools, so your resume, your
LinkedIn profile, how do you work with healthcare
recruiters, your executive presence, et
cetera. And throughout it all, we offer you
CME credits that post each and every quarter
or every 12 weeks into your CME transcript,
which allows you to take your CME dollars
and get reimbursed for tuition in the program
through our CME program, which is very
distinctive. There is no other program in the
U.S. that is offering you CME credits on
a quarterly basis to allow for that. And we
fall over three calendar years, so you can use
three years of your CME dollars to help
pay for the program. Here's a quote on
our screen from Dr. Sonal Desai from
a class of 2022. She's actually finishing
her Presidential Management Fellowship,
which is a fellowship focusing in on
management across health care. her quote, everything
we learned in the Physician MBA program
was an opportunity for immediate application
in my work. The goal of the Physician MBA
is to teach us how to use new skills and
skill sets, and our goal is to apply them.
The added value of attending a top-tier
program is that you learn from professors and
colleagues from diverse backgrounds, levels
of leadership, and expertise who will help
you build your foundational business skills.
So on the screen, here's a bit of an eye
chart. Most of you have received this document
over email from me. This is what we call
our program of study, which breaks down the
courses in the order that you take them
with the dates of the classes and our residency
sessions, what we call our residency
sessions, when you come here to campus once
every three months. And you'll see we pair sort
of left brain, right brain classes together,
so quantitative and qualitative courses
together. So if you're like, oh, my gosh, I
don't do math. I don't want to get involved
in that. Well, we'll always have a class.
You know, we pair finance with conflict
resolution and negotiations. So you can sort of
go back and forth. And you'll see the
courses really build on each other. And we
have a description of every courses on our
website. So you can look at them in further
detail. But of course, we have a Lean Six
Sigma green belt you do in your operations
quarter, which is immersive quarter in operations.
You can see the executive coaching
flowing throughout. So this document is very
helpful. We always say, like, put this on your
fridge because this organizes the next 21
months of your life. the modality is
incredibly flexible as I mentioned already the
way that it works is we're 70% online and
30% in person so in the online component you can
expect to spend about 10 to 14 hours a
week in the online instruction as I mentioned
already it's mostly asynchronous you
typically have something due every week but the
faculty always publish that well ahead of
time so you can plan ahead in the program
and then the in-person component is that immersion
week at the beginning the Leadership
Immersion Week, our healthcare policy course,
which is in the last week of October of the
second year. And then other than that, you
come here seven times to Indianapolis for
a three-day weekend. That's Thursday, Friday,
Saturday, all day, once every three months
is how that works. And a little bit about,
I already mentioned sort of the breakdown
in our cohort, but we typically have
a cohort in the 40s. We'll see lots of
different states represented. The average
age in our program is about 44, and we'll
see quite a diverse number of organizations,
practice environments, and specialties.
And here's a great quote from Dr. Chris
Day, who came in the program, actually in
our second cohort, who started as a
radiologist and now served on the board after
being CEO of his radiology group. He's
now on the board for his group. And his quote,
my interaction with fellow classmates
has been phenomenal. The Kelly School
provides an environment that allows for
maximum interaction with a variety of
physicians, which I think is the best way to
learn. We learned almost as much from
each other as we do from the outstanding
Kelly professors. And before I turn
it over to Dr. Kelly for his
perspective, I wanted to just run through a
couple of housekeeping sort of details
to make sure we're all on the
same page as those. Our program costs,
they do cover everything I've been
talking about. So instruction, our
technology, all of your student experience,
because when you come to campus,
we have networking events on Thursday
night, Friday night. We, of course, provide
meals and snacks, which are important.
It covers all your executive
coaching, your career coaching, our lecture
series, which is done as a virtual
CME-based webinar. All of our primers,
any CME administration, et cetera, that's
all inclusive in our program costs. So we're
not one of those programs where we're like,
well, this is what the cost is, and here's
plus, plus, plus. It's just comprehensive.
What we recommend budgeting is about $96
,000 for the 21 months. And we do, you know, depending
on your distance from campus, we recommend
you budget also for your travel costs,
which we do keep a hotel block at the JW
Marriott at a much lower rate for you to utilize,
which is very helpful. And how do you pay
for it? I'm getting this question because
we're getting close to our application
deadlines. So people are saying, okay, well,
how does, Are there places to pay for it?
Well, of course, we offer all kinds of
different payment models. We do have scholarships
that we offer to help defray your
travel costs primarily. You can utilize
financial aid in terms of loans. And then we always
say don't leave free money on the table.
So the first place to look for funding is
your CMEs. And actually ask your organization
to be your partner because this program,
they will get the return on investment. And
we actually have some talking points about
this on our website. But you're, you know,
you're doing projects on your organizations.
You're almost becoming a consultant for your
own organization. And if they were to hire
a physician getting an MBA to consult for
the organization, it would typically cost
more than our entire program, which keep in mind
for sort of comparison, the average cost of
an MBA program here in the Midwest, an
executive MBA program, is $158,000. And so
we're actually placed well below our market
as a top-ranked program, but that's because
our mission is to partner with physicians
to help you learn this language of business.
So always look at your CME funding and then
also employer tuition reimbursement. Most
employers have some kind of tuition reimbursement
they offer to employees. So immediately
look at those two places for sort of
free money that you can utilize. And we're here
to chat with you about how you pay for the
program if you're wanting to. And then on
admission requirements, we're really choosing
selection is based on your academic career
accomplishments, the clarity of your career
plans. We are looking to partner with you.
You know, we're trying to create this
essentially like this army of change agents that
go across the industry and create effective
change wherever you're going. So we're looking
for physicians who are, you know, emerging
change agents in your own right. And
so, of course, our requirements are an MD
or a DO. We encourage you to have post-residency
experience. And then you can see on the
screen here, in terms of the other pieces that
are required, we do not require any kind
of standardized exams. Much more important
to us is your letters of recommendation,
your statement, and your admission
interview. So with that, I want to turn it
to Dr. Kelly to talk about his experience
in the program. He graduated from
our program in 2019, and he's in a new
role as the CMO of Greenville Market
in South Carolina. thank you so much for
being here welcome everybody i'll uh i
i've been gonna do it a certain way and i'm
gonna still do it that way but i'm gonna do
a slightly different way based upon the
fact that suzanna who is fantastic
provided a lot of the information that you so
i'm gonna do a little more about the jury um
so i again graduated in 2019 i was happy
to hear you have the block at the JW Marriott
now instead of been at the other location.
They have little things. Can I do the
whole thing over again? I would do it again
if I had a chance. So I think one of the
differentiators in 2016, when I thought about
doing an MBA or what I would do with my
career, I'm a cardiologist by training. When
I looked into this program, I was on
faculty at Vanderbilt and probably still early mid
-career in my 40s at the time when I was thinking
about doing this. I think some of my
frustrations in healthcare were that sort of cliche
statement of having a seat at the table
and how do you get to do that? How do you
become more savvy in the world of business? How
do you get people to listen to you a little
bit more? And how do you impact meaningful
change with operational pieces or other pieces,
mitigate burnout in yourself as well
as others. So when I started to spend time
thinking about how I would do that, I went through
probably a thing that a lot of you go
through, which is, is this getting another
degree? Can I lean into something else? Do I
need to do mission work? What is it that's
going to work for me? I looked at
MBA programs across the United States,
both physician -specific and non
-physician-specific. I talked with the chair
of my cardiovascular department who really
recommended I go more towards an MBA
than some of the other niche programs,
the MMHCs, the MMMs, because it would be
more applicable to the real world and give
me more options and had more sort of people
knew what it was. And also even against
an MHA program that maybe that would be a
path to go. But I think the MBA overall is one
of those programs that allows you to differentiate
yourself later on. Whether it's
industry that you want to go into, whether it's a
chief medical officer, administrative role
like I'm in and was in previously in my
last organization, or whether you're going to
go in the startup way, you want to learn those
skills. I think you could do a lot more
things with an MBA. And then specifically for
me, and I think this has only gotten better
with time as it becomes more honed, it was
clear to me that the Kelly School, no
relation. I didn't get any discount related to the
last name. I noticed just the difference
in how dedicated they were to the mission that
they speak to, to the physicians, and how
attentive they were to the needs of the
providers and how to make that work for them. It
was a fantastic experience for me. I think it
would be for anybody thinking about doing
it as well, but you have to do what works
for you. Sometimes it's geography, sometimes
it's money, sometimes it's other things, but
I would say that you can't go wrong with
this particular program. And Susanna spoke
to that a little bit more. My decision process
at the end, because I had some
opportunities to stay at Vanderbilt and do a program,
I felt like I needed to step outside
of that, do a full program a little longer
rather than a truncated one and where I was
in my career and what I had some real
discussions of myself about what kind of
skillset I actually had. And I needed a little
more time and I wanted to have something
that was more flexible for me. I remember
driving up more often than the current
curriculum does up to Indianapolis on a regular
basis. I would listen to lectures sometimes
on the one and a half speed to get
things done, podcast and other pieces. And I
always looked forward to dinner with my
classmates and that part of the learning, which
is, I'd say, from the learning standpoint,
a third of it's the in-person, a third
of it's the remote, and a third of it's
what you get from your classmates, just from
purely the experience that you get from a
learning standpoint. So we even, I
think, to some degree when we left,
and other places may have this
experience too, felt a little bit
of, you know, kind of sadness around finishing
up and going away from those people
that you've sort of spent time with in
those cohorts. So great team learning approach.
So in making that decision and trying
to make it work at the time, I was a full
time clinician. I had some things that I
did in a local smaller hospital, part of
a spoken hub model where we were the only
cardiovascular services at where I was the
medical director for the non-invasive lab,
the cardiac rehab and the chair of
their department of medicine, which wasn't
a heavy as heavy of a lift. And I was able
to work around that, trying to navigate
with my employer with Vanderbilt at the
time about, you know, clinical stuff, way that
I was paid, how much I could leverage CME
money and how much tuition reimbursement
I could get and how those finances work
out was a big part of it. and then trying to
figure out my clinic schedule and my
partner's call coverage. And I probably did
this in a reverse order, but at the
time I had three young children and a wife who
was super supportive of this move because
I felt like it was important for me
to, couldn't do just clinical medicine
and not have a seat at the table for the
next three decades. I needed to
have a mix and differentiate
to some degree. So I made that
decision, took the leap, had the
support across the board for
the most part. And it was, it was
fantastic. I think a couple of my favorite
parts of this beyond the core or foundational
coursework, I really enjoyed the
negotiation course. I enjoyed almost all
the courses. Everybody likes things, you know,
differently, but I thought you shouldn't
sleep on the soft skills. So the soft
skill courses are super important. All of
those things dealing with people and dealing
with personalities and trying to navigate
those waters is how you get to creating
that great pro-former where you can get the
CFO to sign off on something that's really
important to you. You have to have all
of those soft skills in order to sort of
use the hard skills to get to your ending
or where you want to be, especially in
a role like a CMO role or VPMA role or CCO
role. So I think those are very important
courses. I thought the quality of the
teaching for me was fantastic, very open,
very transparent, sort of friends, discussions,
collaborations, availability um the
executive coaching which uh if i did it now
you know seven years further out in my career
or further knowing what i know now i would
have leaned in more to the executive coaching
being part of this because getting an
executive coach after the fact is a significant
amount of expense to it and you don't
realize how important it can be to just have
that person to bounce things off of whatever
your situation is as that voice and you can
you sort of undervalue you that. So I
would recommend for anybody who does this to
really use the executive coaching to their
benefit, something I probably didn't do as
much as I wish I had. The operational courses
for me were really important. I have some
belief that as a chief medical officer in the
old school mentality and some of the new
school mentality around it, that if you have
some operational swagger, you have some
skills within that, you can help maneuver into
that area a little bit, being cognizant
that it's not always your lane, the chief
operating officers and other sort of
administrative folks want to handle most of that,
but where you can help people, they tend to let
you kind of into their universe more. And
I found that for physicians, the more
operational input they can have, or the more they
can be involved in the operational piece, the
better they're going to be able to sort of
speak to their medical staff and feel like
less of sort of a influence without
authority figure, which is another important thing.
But if you can get a little bit of authority
in those areas by having that operational
knowledge, being able to add to it,
that's very important. I think the Kelly School
really gave me a lot of those skills to be
able to sort of make myself useful, so to
speak, when I started to go. When I came out of
the program, I remember going to the health
policy experience in DC as the end of our
program at the time. I to some degree, and
that was in May of 2019. I actually already
had a position lined up as a VPMA or CMO
of about a 450-bed hospital in Western
Kentucky, which is actually my wife's hometown. So
sort of a serendipitous event for me at
the time with young children allowed me to
have a little more time with those young
children, believe it or not, having a mix of
clinical and administrative role, and really, I
think, prolonged my career, my health, and
my happiness or peace with kind of where I
was in my career and life. This transition
that I just made, at some point, either
you become stagnant or you're looking for
different opportunities or, you know, those stages
of life. So I work for Bonscore's Mercy
Health, which is the fifth largest catholic
health institution in the country also as
the largest private health ensure health care
organization in ireland uh just a little
little known fact and i'm part of one of their
markets that's kind of middle-sized market
here in greenville south carolina which is
a place i really enjoy from a place to live
for my wife and kids and they're making
the transition here i have a couple of hospitals
that i am the acute care sort of cmo for
about 400 total beds between those. And we
have sort of a different model, a lot of
freestanding EDs. So I'm involved in those and
a lot of growth and a lot of building, a
lot of care sites and building service
lines and all of those things. So this has been
a good transition for me. And the start of
all of that, I think, was getting the MBA
and finding an ability or a position to get
into. For people who want to get into the
startup world, I'm a little more risk averse than
that. But I think some of the
courses around strategy, strategic
marketing, as well as just
strategy in general. And the professors in
those space give you an idea of how to do
that. There's some immersion experience
around some of the startups in the Indianapolis
area, which I think was useful at the time
for me to think through it. Some angel
investing opportunities. I don't know if those
still exist to kind of listen to that outside
of the course wick itself, but we would
do that on, I believe it was Thursday nights
in downtown Indianapolis from time to time
to see if there was something you wanted
to get involved in. So it just opens up an
entirely new universe to you as a physician.
Some people that I had, I'm still friends
with a couple of CMOs, one in Louisville,
or actually two in Louisville, Kentucky,
who were farther along in their journey, were
already chief medical officers or higher
up. But this program really meets you where
you're at. So anywhere from you've got some
experience, your fear is out, you're not
involved in any type of administrative position
or even some of the unpaid directorship
positions that exist, it can meet you there.
It can meet you all the way on the other
end where you're trying to, you know, turn
something in the C-suite into a CEO position
for a small hospital or something else. I think
it's limitless, you know, in that sense.
So I have, you know, a couple other thoughts
and then I really want, if there's any
questions, I'll do that. One of the things that
I think was the most difficult for me and
i didn't appreciate it as much and is a
little uh was initial frustration for me not
about the program but my own ability to do it
is it is exceptionally hard it is a real mba
um to be very efficient in and and set time
constraints um about when you're going to study
what's your set aside time, what your clinic
is. If you are at all sort of prone to,
to not being a very structured person in
some ways, even though there's a lot of flexibility
in the program, you do have to set aside
time to get the most out of this experience.
There are times when you will have to dial
it in a little more than other times. I was
never something I was really comfortable with.
I'm paying for part of this too, right?
This is a, this is a, for me, for my family,
for the patient type of endeavor, and to
get the most out of it, make sure that you find
ways to be efficient, set aside time, and
make sure your family and practice group are
really aware of that you're doing this and
are supportive of it, and that you can carve
that time out. That's the way I think that
you're getting it the most out. You can
certainly do it not doing that, but I think that
you would rather get the most out of this
type of program that you can by being very
dedicating to that sort of work. And then the
other part for me, just for people that have
young children or just trying to decide if
they're going, you know, all the way towards an
administrative physician type of position or
how they integrate clinical in here. I
found that the first six years that I did this
before I moved here, I was very engaged,
still doing clinical. And I thought I'd be an 80
% admin, 20% clinical. What ends up happening
in those and certainly do It's 120 percent
administrative and 50 percent clinical.
There's just not enough hours to do both. Well,
for me personally, some people are a little
bit more brilliant, a little bit better
equipped and can do that. I think it's
exceptionally difficult to kind of live
in both universes. In this position that
I came to, I made a decision to sort of focus
more. We're starting a GME program and I'm
talking about a med residency, which starts
here in July with a 12, you know, first
initial 12 out of the match. And so I'm going
to focus more on the teaching aspects, which
I've done previously. Keep my toe in the
clinic a little bit. I have the Greenville
Free Clinic here where I'll spend a little
bit of time and still have my license cert.
but I'm kind of stepping away from being, um,
in both worlds. I think that can somehow
make you think that you've lost credibility,
uh, amongst some of your, you know,
physician peers who would think you now kind of
gone all the way. Um, I found that not to
be the case as long as you're truthful with
them, gain their trust and are pretty
transparent with them in general about the
things you know and the things you don't know.
So those are just a couple of things that
I, that I found thinking back and being a
little nostalgic about my time and my experience
there, which is one of just a great
experience in my life and has really given me
a new path and a new sort of ability to sort
of reinvent myself, reinvigorate myself,
and actually probably lengthen my career by 10 to 15 years.
So thank you. I just love that. You
can stay on screen. We'll take some
questions from our participants, but you've
just re-inspired me for what we do, right
like the impact that you're having so for
those of you listening to us here live which
of course some of you are watching
the recording so you won't have this opportunity
but for those of you listening to
us live if you have questions you can put
them either in the Q&A box or the chat box
below we're using a different version of
Zoom so you don't have to turn on your camera
or mic just type your question into
one of those options. Let me ask the first
question and that is like when you think
through the last month as you've been making
this transition what are probably what are
some of the skills that you gained in
the MBA program that you use on just a daily
basis now that are sort of like second
nature to you that you didn't necessarily
have before you started the program now I
could you know I could probably talk for
an entire hour about some of that but I'll
use some even even from today for instance so
I met with a physician this morning who's an
advanced endoscopist and has also a great
sort of uh plan in theory he tends to
be a little bit more of a uh a bowl about
his his approach to that right and and
so having a little coaching time with him
to talk about ways to present data to follow
the process as to that, some of the soft
skills stuff, right? Give me some more
analytics. Make sure I think I use this exactly.
Sometimes positions will split mom and
dad. And by that, I mean, they'll split
administration and physician side. And I
mean, I wanted to sort of talk to them about,
let's all get at the table. We all are
professionals and let's, you know, negotiate
through the things, prioritize your list,
get the pro forma together about what the
return is on doing this. What's vision for this
is. And then I need you to sort of stop
for a second and stop asking for more and
let us kind of just get this stuff done. The
second piece I was in this morning, I was in
scrubs a little while ago in the OR for
something that's going on here in sterile processing.
And again, there was a little bit of
data analytics to this and working with the
infection prevention and quality folks and
just telling them, you don't recognize that
you know this already as a physician, but
maybe how you approach it with different
groups to say, you know, I think we should
present it in this way because this is the way
that your surgeons are really going to think
through this and really get on board with
this. We can't always use the joint commission
as the sort of bad guy methodology. We can
do a lot better if we can actually kind of
provide them the data and the why behind it
and then get some sort of small wins, build
some sort of consensus and, you know kind
of do that change management uh piece of it
all and then figure out how to sustain it and
not drift away from it so it comes into
play every day i think it's gotten to the point
now where it's second nature so i don't
think of as much but i would guarantee you in
2017 before i kind of as i was going through
this i could be the bull in the china shop
on occasion as well um about why we you
know i just wanted it fixed and i wanted the
answer now and that's not the way the
administrative world works. So there's that. As
far as things like, you know, I was on
a capital committee meeting yesterday and
we were just talking about the bucket that
we have left and the things are coming
in, all that stuff. I don't need to be the
expert in the room, but I need to be very
aware of it and try to say like, hey, I
was just thinking or, and be able to come
from a place where I'm not saying something,
not that you can't say silly things or
anything like that. And I still do, but
just that I have a little more sense of
what I'm talking about and maybe the way that
physicians thinking about it and sort of
being that bridge. So it, it's an everyday,
you know, the next meeting I have, you
know, after this in the afternoon is, is, is
related to just, um, how I'm going to deal
with the GME related stuff and some contract
stuff, how I'm going to do with the compliance
issue around how we do, you know, uh,
our surgical first assistance at there. So
contracts and compliance and the legal aspects
of this come up with regularity as well
where you have to think about you know the
simple stuff uh maybe not simple but the star
cloth stuff and other stuff but all these
other things around contracts compliance uh
and that so you get you're not going to get all
of that but you're going to get introduced
to that and you're going to find little
pearls within that that are going to come up
and you'll be like i've seen this before so
it's really that susanna yeah well what you're
talking about is something i talk about
a lot like it's just that you speak the
language i mean i love all the examples you just
game of course I'm like oh that's yes yes
yes but you're speaking the language and there's
a confidence piece right like before coming
through an MBA you you you're incredibly
smart you can figure it out but when you
sit down at the table now it's just it's a
confidence of like yeah I know what that is I
saw that before what you just said it increases
for a lot of people I talk about that
confidence like we all can struggle with
imposter syndrome here and there and so when you've
got the credentials and you're sitting
at the table the rest of the people go oh
wait we know what you know, you know, cause
when you show up as an MD, there's not the same
language necessarily. And so there's,
there's, it just kind of levels the playing
fields in some regards. I took it as
an opportunity. This goes along
with that confidence thing, right?
I don't have, I don't enjoy necessarily
public speaking. I did like the blood
connection event a couple weeks ago.
It's like the mics and that. And during
COVID, unfortunately, I got to do a lot of
that under different circumstances. But
when I did the MBA, one of the things
I challenged myself with in that opportunity
is if I speak about a cardiology
issue or do a lecture, it's second nature.
And I know that, and that confidence
makes the public speaking, you
know, phobia sort of dissipate into
the background. There were times when
I would be willing to be the speaker, and
I really didn't want to do that during my
MBA, but I sort of forced myself to be
the speaker to try to get over a little bit
of that phobia as I learned the information.
And as I became, like you said, more
confident in the information that I was
providing and speaking to it, it really
helped. It did away with that. The speaking
about it went to the background and I could
just do it. And now it's sort of second
nature. So I do, you know, as you're doing
it, create your own list of challenges going
into an MBA program for this, because,
you know, this later in life learning. I'm
in my 50s, but I was in my 40s when I did
the program. And so you can still get
over some of those things and sort of
reinvent yourself, which is a very nice thing
to be able to do. Yeah. And I love what
you said about coaching because often having
a coach can help with some of that
too. Like when you say to them, I'm walking
into this meeting, I'm not sure I feel as
confident as I'd like to. They can be that
second person. And I also appreciate what
you said about the cost of a coach. In fact,
if you were to hire a coach for 21 months,
it costs almost as much as our program
does in that regard. So I wanted to remind
our participants, you can use the Q&A
button at the bottom for any questions or the
chat functionality. And I'll just keep
asking questions that I know people always
ask me to ask you until I get some
others. Can you kind of nuts and bolts us on
the time commitment piece? Like how you
had young kids, you had a busy clinical
schedule. You were begging your partners
to switch call, all that kind of stuff.
Can you walk us through, like reflect
back, how did you pull this off? What did
it really look like in the day-to-day
time management piece? Yeah, I got, I think
initially there's this burst of energy with
doing it and you're sort of going through
and doing the reading and you keep up with
everything and then you know life happens and
then you're trying to figure out how to do
it so i the on the partnership side i was
lucky enough that i tried to do quid pro quo
with my partners which worked out because
i was had a good relationship with them
where i was like i'm going to be gone on this day
um you know and i'm going to be gone this
weekend or whatever it is and uh you know or
this is a particular time where i got to
get with my group and so i would just you know,
horse trade a little bit and, and that
worked out. I'm not going to say it wasn't
painful and it didn't work out perfectly all
the time, but you do want your partners to
know, um, some care, some though, uh, as I
found, but, uh, you want them to know, and you
find the ones that are willing to do it
or are interested in what you're doing and
all that on the family front with young kids.
I, I think you, you hope you've picked the
right partner. I think that's, that's it.
That's the, and, and because, and so, you
know, my wife right out of the gate kind of
could see that I think there was a three in
the morning, you know, call back in. I just
got back to the house and, you know, child
said, I'm headed back out for the next call
to the calf lab or something to that degree.
And, you know, she was, I think we, we'd
had three at that time. And when we sat down
and kind of talked about it. She recognized
that was the lifestyle. And I said, I think
that if I do something like this, we can kind
of change the math a little bit, but it's
going to be painful. Um, and it's probably
going to make, uh, add, create
more strain. Um, do you think this
is the right time or not? And she was
supportive and thought that this was the
right time. So, um, I don't know that
there was anything that I said, you know, it
wasn't any, like, uh, I didn't have to buy
a big, you know, I'm joking around. It was
just, it was just a really family discussion
about where we wanted to be as a family and
how we wanted to get to where we could spend
more time and based upon our own peace or
our own happiness. I think there were
times when I just said financially, I'm going
to, let's get somebody in here to help type of
thing, or let's make sure that we get away more
often, or let's leverage whatever we can leverage
on the grandparent side a little more,
even though we may have inherent Irish
Catholic guilt, just giving them a little bit to
do that. And so I, you know, you got to
have the whole village to help you kind of
get through it. And I don't want to make it
hyperbolic in that way, but it's true. And,
and thinking about it, you know, finishing up,
it was a very joyous occasion. I, I didn't
really actually care about my undergraduate
graduation. I would have rather, or, or any,
or even, I mean, med school graduation is
a little different but this was a really kind
of uh it was a moment that was to celebrate
because you recognized and for the people in
your family to celebrate because they
recognized they had to sacrifice too yeah so
there is sacrifice and and we shouldn't underplay
that uh i think making sure that your family
first and foremost is is okay with it and
then secondarily your workplace and your job
that you've made sure that you can do it
i'm i'm uh i think i'm still owed some call
days from my ex-partners i don't think i'm
getting them back but i you know i would be
willing at times i said i'll cover your thanksgiving
and if you cover my fourth of july or
something you know which isn't a great trade
for anybody who knows that but because you
get a you know five day almost weekend to a
to a three-day weekend but you do what you
can to get it done and you know that there's
an ending to it just like all of us have gone
through training and there's an ending to
it and there's a reason that you've done it
and there's a goal so yeah Yeah. I love all
of that. I appreciate all of that because
I think it's just the reality of what this
commitment means. But then the outcome, right?
When you look at your career trajectory that
you've been on for the last five years, would
you be on that same trajectory if you hadn't
learned this language of business and used
that, you know, that 21 months to carve
out this commitment as a family, right? it's
worth the investment in that regard. And I
would be remiss if I didn't share in our
orientation, we actually walk through where the
program falls in priority for time commitment
pieces. So we always say, you know, first
is your health, then your family, then your
job, and then the program. And that kind of
orientation helps with the time commitment as
well. I just want to put one last call out
for any questions you all might have of
myself or Michael any questions you guys might
want answered I think both of us have been so
comprehensive that we don't have as many
questions from our participants who are like
I've heard everything I needed to ask but can
you talk a little bit about the study team
aspect and your experience there which obviously
is replicated daily you know as you were
walking through things you were doing what
was your do you still talk to members of your
study teams that you were part of and what
was your experience like what projects did
you do how did you find that experience within
the program. Yeah. I'm going to remember
some and I won't remember others, but I
do remember, I mean, so Dr. Karki, Prakash
Karki and I were in our first team table. I
think you'd get an opportunity to be with
people that you normally wouldn't be with. It
feels a little more like med school in that
way. In med school, we're all brought in
and we're all trying to get a medical degree and
we haven't differentiated ourselves into the
psychiatrist and the orthopedists and
the neuros. And then you become more like these
sub-segmentations in med school where
people sort of gravitate to there. And this,
it brings it all back together. So you're dealing
with the neurosurgeons and the radiologists
and the people in a different area
that think differently, different age groups,
and trying to navigate those generational
components about learning and styles,
which is a huge sort of microcosm of a cultural
experiment as well. All of mine were
great. I don't remember any issues with
any group. And then sometimes you have to
set sort of a charter for your group and
expectations of each member, like within
that, when you're studying remotely
and somebody maybe doesn't show up or
somebody does. I did not have those issues.
I'm aware of those issues. I'm aware of
those issues in my current life doing a
lot of remote stuff. But you have, I think,
and then you start to hear and listen
more than speak to actively listen to say,
hey, well, you know, I don't really, I'm not
an expert in this, but this person has
all this expertise. Let me hear, let's have
them talk. And you got to try to help them
pull it out, right? So, because some
people are quieter than others. Some people
talk more than others. For instance, you know,
just to use names. So Jason Smith and
Chad Mathis and I, you know, he's their
CMO folks and we're different individuals
and they were at different levels where
I was and was more, you know, in this area
than the other. So we still will text
from time to time about certain issues that
we're having in our lives or just take a quick
phone call. I've had, you know, clinical
issues during COVID where I was looking to deal
with something just because of where we
were co-located in the state of Kentucky, where
we would talk about that. And then some of
the other individuals I've had reach out
to me to ask me about these types of roles
in life and give, you know, my thought like,
hey, somebody's kind of interested in maybe
we wanted to do this. Tell me why I shouldn't
is usually what I hear. And there's
certainly some of that. And so it's been a good
group you know we're you know 2019 so we're
you know six years out a little bit more
now but we there's still some contact
from a group of people and i feel like i could
lean on even the ones that i wasn't as close
to as part of the alumni association to
do that um and i'll say this and i don't
it doesn't it doesn't matter if people have
questions or anything like that and you
know this is and i'm happy if people want
to reach out after the fact individually and
have a conversation you can share my my cell
phone number usually text me first and then
i can call back when to have some time.
But I'm always happy to talk about this or
anything, because I think that's part of
how we as physicians and physician leaders can
start to take back some of the, some of
the, I don't want to call it power, but be
part of the solution. Yeah. Take back the
conversation. I deeply appreciate that. And
I love the passion that you speak with.
It's like I match your passion in terms
of how our program really creates that
voice, right, that you can leverage to
create change and the connections that you
still serve you today. So I haven't seen any
questions pop up. So if you have other
questions, I'm going to send out the recording
to all of you. Most of you are watching
this recording now. And I'll be sure to
include Michael's contact information so you
can follow up with him with any questions
that you might want to have. So I want to thank
all of you for your time here today. Thank
you for spending time investing about
learning about the Kelly Physician MBA. And
Michael, thanks. I really, like you've re-inspired
me for the work I get to do. I literally
have the best job because I work with really
smart people who want to make the world a
better place and make healthcare more effective.
And so thank you for inspiring me. Thank
you for sharing your experience. I appreciate
your time today. Pleasure. All right. Thanks all. We'll talk again soon.

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