UW Names New Program Director
Dennis Stillman, MHA, was named as the Director of the University of Washington’s Graduate Program in Health Services Administration this Winter. Stillman, who served as the Chief Financial Officer for the University of Washington Medical Center for many years, is a 1979 graduate of the UW MHA Program. Most recently, Stillman taught Finance courses in the UW MHA, Executive MHA, Master of Health Informatics & Health Information Management, and Certificate in Medical Management programs, while working as interim CFO in various organizations around the country. Stillman is now focusing full-time on directorship of the program, and continues to teach Finance across the suite of health administration offerings at the UW.
New Faculty Join UW Progra
The UW MHA Program is pleased to announce the hiring of two new faculty members. Cynthia LeRouge, PhD, MS, CPA, will lead efforts towards developing an NSF Center for Organizational Transformation at the UW. LCDR Suzanne J. Wood, PhD, MS, FACHE, will focus on teaching management, strategy and leadership across the MHA and Executive MHA health management programs. Bios for Dr. LeRouge and Dr. Wood are below.
Cynthia LeRouge, PhD, MS, CPA
Dr. LeRouge has been recognized with teaching, research, and service awards. She will lead efforts towards developing an NSF Center for Organizational Transformation site at UW. The Center for Health Organization Transformation, or CHOT, is an industry-university cooperative research center (I/UCRC) funded by the National Science Foundation and health organizations to conduct research supporting major management, clinical, and information technology innovations in health care (http://www.chotnsf.org/). She hopes to engage alumni in this important effort.
Cynthia has over 75 publications including academic journal articles, edited chapters in research-based books, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings. Her primary research interests relate to telemedicine, consumer health informatics, and public health informatics. Her teaching areas include health IT and project management. She is currently co-editor in chief of Health Systems journal.
Dr. LeRouge has served as a visiting scholar at the Center of Disease Control with the Public Health Informatics Fellowship Program. She is currently on the executive advisory committee for the American Telemedicine Association’s Business and Finance Special Interest Group and has served as an executive officer of the Association of Information Systems Special Interest Group for Healthcare Research. Dr. LeRouge has held various senior management roles in the accounting, software, and healthcare industries prior to joining academe. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of South Florida.
LCDR Suzanne J. Wood, PhD, MS, FACHE
Dr. Wood, a 2006 graduate of Old Dominion University’s Business School, has most recently served as an Assistant Professor, Health Management and Policy, in the highly ranked Master of Health Administration degree program at Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO. She is a Fellow, American College of Health Care Executives and past chair for the Lewis E. Angelo Professional Symposium, a professional meeting for U.S. Navy health care executives. Dr. Wood serves as a Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy Reserve, and has over 23 years officer and enlisted experience. She served the past five years on active duty as a Medical Service Corps officer, Deputy Program Director for Navy/Coast Guard, Army-Baylor Graduate Program. She is also a Fellow, Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education.
Dr. Wood served as consultant for the strategic planning initiatives of the: (1) Army-Baylor Graduate Program in Nutrition; (2) San Antonio Military Medical Services (SA-MMS) organization; (3) U.S. Air Force Dietetics specialty corps; (4) an international sub-group of the American Dietetics Association; (5) the San Antonio Military Medical System; (6) Navy Medicine Training Command; and (7) Naval Hospital Guam; and (8) the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Navy Medicine, Washington D.C. As for International Business, she served as faculty consultant for Baylor University’s EMBA applied projects in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Hong Kong, China. She also taught strategic management for the U.S. State Department and U.S. Air Force as part of an executive education initiative, in which developing nations sent high-level representatives to the U.S. to learn to extend and manage national health systems. Countries included: Switzerland, Estonia, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, and Chechnya. By extension, and as a result of her relationship with the group sponsoring international education initiatives, she recently returned from Colombo, Sri Lanka where she delivered a course on strategic management to the Ministry of Health and military leadership
MHA Students Land National Fellowships
Fellowship season is off to a great start for the University of Washington MHA class of 2015. UW is proud to announce several graduating MHA students have already secured national fellowship placements. Congratulations to the following students, beginning work in their administrative fellowships following graduation in June 2015.
- Victor Kao, Administrative Fellow at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, Washington.
- Anisa Khaleel, Administrative Fellow at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas.
- Leslie Mallinger, Administrative Fellow at Neighborcare Health, Seattle, Washington.
- Sam Nepple, Administrative Fellow at Mercy Health System in Janesville, Wisconsin.
- David Rettig, Administrative Fellow at Swedish Health & Services, Seattle, Washington.
- Lisa Tat, Administrative Fellow at Sutter Health West Bay Region, California.
- Sergio Vincenti, Administrative Fellow at Sutter Medical Foundation in Sacramento, California.
- Kelly Youngberg, Administrative Fellow at CHI Franciscan Health, Washington.
Jeff Goldsmith Attracts Crowd at MHA Alumni Event
The MHA Program proudly hosted Jeff Goldsmith as the Keynote speaker for the annual MHA Evening for Alumni event this January. Goldsmith delivered a talk titled, “What if the Crowd is Wrong?” questioning the popular thinking held by many in our field. Nearly 150 alumni, students and members of the region’s health care community gathered to hear from Goldsmith. In addition to the evening presentation, Goldsmith held separate seminars for students and faculty. The program was delighted to welcome Jeff to the UW campus.
(Left to Right: Dennis Stillman, MHA Program Director; Doug Conrad, MHA Professor; Jeff Goldsmith.)
Professor Doug Conrad Leads Innovation Model
The UW School of Public Health, led by Professor Doug Conrad of the MHA Program, is poised to play a key role evaluating Washington State’s transformative Healthier Washington Project, which stresses health care value over volume. The state received a four-year, $65 million grant from the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to fund the program.
Healthier Washington aims to save the state a billion dollars, and accelerate the state's culture of innovation. It was developed through a collaboration of state leaders, community members, legislators, and health care systems. The project focuses on three strategic areas:
- Building healthier communities and people through early prevention and early mitigation of disease at all stages of life
- Integrating care and social supports for people with physical and behavioral illnesses that affect each other
- Paying for value in health care instead of volume
The state's application named Douglas Conrad, Professor in the School of Public Health's Department of Health Services, as the lead for the state evaluation team for Healthier Washington, which includes senior faculty expertise in health economics and finance, organization and management, program evaluation, information technology, population health, and epidemiology.
The team is complemented by Group Health Research Institute (GHRI), the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), as well as state agency experts and UW graduate students. They will use both qualitative and quantitative methods to assess impact. The UW effort will be housed at the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice (NWCPHP) in the Department of Health Services with Conrad as the principal investigator and Tao Sheng Kwan-Gett as co-principal investigator.
"The opportunity to lead the state-based evaluation of Healthier Washington is one of the highlights of my 37-year career at the University of Washington," says Professor Conrad, who is also an affiliate investigator at GHRI. "By leveraging the analytic and research expertise of our UW Health Services-based evaluation team with the capacity of IHME, GHRI, the School of Public Health and other Health Sciences schools, the Health Care Authority (HCA), the Governor's Office, and other relevant state agencies, I believe this project will significantly improve the health and economic well-being of Washington State's population. My colleagues and I are dedicated to conducting a scientifically rigorous and practically useful evaluation."
"Healthier Washington presents tremendous opportunities to increase collaborations between health care, public health, and the community," says Dr. Kwan-Gett, Director of NWCPHP. "We're excited for our faculty, staff, and students to contribute to health system transformation in our state."
The state's data-driven, continuous improvement system underlies the project's measurement efforts. It provides health, health care cost, and quality targets that are reviewed quarterly and made public.
"Gov. Jay Inslee has a bold vision for building a healthier Washington, one where we are realizing better health, better care and lower costs for Washingtonians," says Dorothy Teeter, Director of the WA State Health Care Authority and UW MHA Alumna. "The UW evaluation support is a key element of this initiative—we are trying out some truly cutting-edge innovations and need to know whether and how they improve health outcomes."