A Clinic Operations Farewell

As you know, I will be leaving the Department of Family Medicine and UW Health at the end of November. My wife and I are moving to our "Camelot" south of Sparta, Wisconsin. I will be practicing full time in Sparta, and enjoying our land and a new lifestyle it will provide.

I would ask your indulgence as I recap my last three years and look at future opportunities for clinical care within our Department.

First a big thank you to all of you who either accepted or adjusted to my role in DFM leadership. I always understood that I was given this opportunity rather than having earned it. Perhaps because of this, I believe I never took my role for granted and always gave 110 percent.

Within clinical operations I am most proud of a few accomplishments over the last three years. To be sure, not everyone will agree that these are accomplishments, but that is one of the lessons of leadership that I have learned. Striving to achieve certain goals and moving a group forward will likely result in conflict and open disagreements.

Today, I believe the relationship between the DFM, UWMF and UW Health is the strongest that it has ever been. When I came to the DFM it was not uncommon to be in a meeting where UWMF was reduced to a four letter word.

Through strong efforts of our operations team, including Sue Kaletka, MPH, Jim Berg, MBA and most recently David Dadds, MS, Rebecca Chiochis-Weckler, CPC and Steve Hall, CPA, we have a very strong relationship with our partners. This allows us to take advantage of many shared operations efforts that improve quality and reduces costs. DFM operations leadership is at nearly every important operations table UWMF and at UW Health. We have a strong, respected voice and our counsel is often sought.

Clinic level leadership has always been important within the DFM. We have added four community medical directors to the leadership table. Presently; David Ringdahl, MD, Catherine James, MD, Byron Marquez, DO and Jeff McGuire, MD hold these positions. This has created a great opportunity to develop new leaders for our department, to take advantage of the abilities of our faculty and to provide better communication of operations needs and objectives at the clinic level. We have begun to build a leadership team for operations that understands their role within the DFM and their respective clinics. Much work is needed to elevate the role of the medical directors within the department, but we have come a long way.

Data collection and analysis has begun to provide us with a common language and understanding of our practices. Working with Dick Reynolds, MS, MA, the Data Warehouse Team and UWMF has had the result of moving our entire organization towards a common operations language and understanding such that we can now provide physicians information and move towards more efficient, quality practices.

Aligning the missions of research, education and clinical care is at the core of our strategic mission statement. I believe that the clinical operations team has been a key leader in making this alignment a priority within the Department. It will take everyone's effort to keep this alignment as the driving principal of the DFM.

The establishment of a Clinic Operations Director has been a very good move for the Department. Sue Kaletka, MPH has been DFM's first Clinic Operations Director over the last year. Her understanding of the DFM and UWMF and her relationship with the managers has been extremely valuable and will serve the DFM well in the future. Our ability to provide quality, safe and efficient care at all of our clinics is, and will be possible, in no small part due to Sue's efforts. In addition we have increased our staff within our Quality Team and now have the skills and abilities of Maggie Dugan, FNP full time. Everyone is aware of how important Maggie's efforts have been with regards to quality of care in the past. Having more of Maggie's time can only be a good thing! Les Moffet, MBA provides invaluable assistance, and rounds out our quality team.

The "Quality in Compensation" program, while a sub group of the Compensation Committee, has really been the result of a strong effort by our operations team to bring quality issues to a level of consciousness that can lead towards significant Departmental change. While many have and still view this skeptically, I believe in the long run this will be the vehicle that prepares us for future outside pay for performance needs as well as helps us organize and motivate changes that can lead towards goals of quality and efficiency. It is a work in progress, which will require patience and tending to over the long run. Each year will see improvements in the process until this becomes simply a part of everyday operations.

Our strongest asset is also our greatest challenge for the future. The size and diversity of our Department and its three missions are what give us the potential to be the best at what we do. Having clinical operations as a leader and focal point around which alignment can occur is what I would give to the new Vice Chair of Clinical Care for a recipe for success.