Values-Driven Journey

The best professional advice I ever received was to leverage my natural intuition to make friends, using it to gain deeper insights into the industry I worked in. As a physician recruiter for a national Independent Review Organization (IRO), at the time, I had built friendships across all levels of the corporate hierarchy. Recognizing my potential beyond productivity, my boss challenged me to use my interpersonal skills to step into leadership roles; planting a seed for future success. 

The mental shift was a natural one. Over the next year, I grew as a leader in our department and the company by demonstrating:

• I was a reliable resource that management in any of the company’s offices could rely on in a pinch.
• Physicians I recruited could trust my insight.
• Proving capable in training new hires.

Within a year of taking on that challenge, I was promoted to take on a new department as the National Business Development Manager.

Years later, I remain committed to continuous learning, development and cultivating professional relationships. In the wake of the elimination of my role as Senior Provider Partnership Manager and Chair of Diversity Equity Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ), at a digital health startup, due to a reduction in force (which impacted everyone from C-Suite down), I am leaning into these values even more so.

Why the Blog?

While I am actively seeking the next career opportunity, getting to know progressive leaders in digital health and showcasing their stories felt like a natural way to increase my knowledge base of both digital health and health equity, while bringing attention to solutions for health disparities.

What's Next?

For over 10 years I’ve enjoyed developing partnerships with providers but I’ve long felt more could be done to grow with providers. My goal is to find a strategic role in which I’d be responsible not just for developing provider partnerships but growing them; leveraging cross-functional teams to grow in mutually beneficial ways.

Where I've Been

During my career, using my interpersonal skills sometimes meant contributing in unconventional ways. When I worked as a physician recruiter at another IRO company, I discovered the extent to which our satellite office was understaffed and unable to keep up with the volume my recruiting efforts led to. I knew our growth would not continue if my providers had a bad experience due to insufficient operational support. This meant pitching in to help schedule, sort records, assist in managing clinic days and track down late reports, when needed. Perhaps most importantly, it meant developing strong relationships with not just my providers but also specific employees who were essential to our operations.

Solution Driven

It was at my most recent employer where my interpersonal skills met inspiration. I quickly realized how the company’s workers’ comp-specific, SaaS EMR for physical and occupational therapy could improve patient outcomes and change the industry. 

For the physical and occupational therapy providers in our network, though, it wasn’t logistically ideal as they’d need to login to a different EMR to document care for patients referred by my employer. To me, that represented an opportunity to work harder to develop trust with providers. Through transparency, empathy and a working command of state-by-state workers’ comp rules, I was able to earn that trust. I further solidified it by partnering with an internal clinical representative on presentations of the digital health platform (which I conducted). This was an opportunity to let prospective providers speak freely, demystify the platform and strengthen their trust in our clinical integrity.

Pioneering New Verticals

Within 18 months I was promoted to the Senior Strategic Provider Partnership Manager.

In this role, I helped pioneer a pilot program to expand provider use of the digital health platform for all their workers’ comp. The pilot (called Premier) was eventually tabled, due to a lack of operational resources but in that role I:

• Proposed operational workarounds for providers to use our EMR solely for workers’ comp claims, gaining a comprehensive understanding of each group’s unique scheduling, documentation and billing processes, while building relationships with departmental leaders along the way.
• Conducted detailed cost-benefit analyses with providers.
• Enabled the digital health solution, by leading virtual presentations to clinical stakeholders, directing cross-functional teams that included clinical, marketing and provider experience to deliver the presentation and ensure engagement and alignment with each clinic’s needs.
• Met quarterly with clinical stakeholders, providing progress reports and leading a cross-functional team to address any provider concerns
• Met weekly with internal leaders from all departments to determine best practices and identify risks

Cross-Functional Trust

In the wake of Premier, I managed several large, regional and national accounts, leading multi-disciplinary teams to help retain, expand and develop trusting relationships with clinical stakeholders. Meanwhile, I laid the foundation for success in CA - the largest potential market for the company - by doubling the size of the provider network, leading to a 200% growth in referrals and revenue, from 2021-23.

To ensure success, in my role, I needed providers to trust both myself and the company I represented. This meant fluid communication with teams such as clinical, provider experience, client experience, payer sales, marketing, product, revenue cycle, referrals, and D and C-Suite to provide the high touch experience providers deserve.

Equitable Leadership

Working across teams so frequently eventually led to being tapped to lead the company’s DEIJ efforts: A priority of C-Suite. I led an 11-person, cross-functional team of that created the company’s core values and mission statement around DEIJ, established employee training, multi-tiered intranet recognitions of cultural holidays, secured speakers for webinars and worked to establish alliances with organizations committed to furthering DEIJ in healthcare. Through this work, I realized there were endless opportunities for mission and solution-driven HealthTech companies to naturally incorporate DEIJ into their identity.

Oak Tree Values

The seed to leverage my natural interpersonal skills was planted as a friendly challenge but has sprouted into an Oak Tree, becoming a foundational value in helping communicate complex concepts, building collaborative partnerships, and driving tangible outcomes.

I'm excited to find out where this values-driven journey takes me next.