Alex Marchant (MHA '24): University of Iowa Physicians - Patient Access Center

 Hello from Iowa City!   

This summer, I have had the excellent opportunity of doing my summer internship with the University of Iowa Physicians (UIP), specifically in their Patient Access Center. UIP is one of the major areas of the University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC), with the Patient Access Center being a major area of UIP.  The Patient Access Center is at the University Capitol Center in downtown Iowa City. The Patient Access Center also works with the Integrated Call Center and the Admission Transfer Center. My direct preceptor is the Director of the Patient Access Center, Keri Semrau, RN MSN. Keri has been the Director of the Patient Access Center and Integrated Call Center since 2015, and she has been nothing but a tremendous preceptor, mentor, and an example of a great leader. I have also had the opportunity of working closely with the Director of Operations and the Director of Ancillary Services.  

So far this summer, I have been given the opportunity to tackle a variety of projects from multiple different areas. Some of these projects have included working with the template management team in creating new, updated decision trees for our schedulers. I have also had the opportunity of setting new productivity scheduling benchmarks for all schedulers in the Patient Access Center to use for FY24, including the appointments scheduled/day and total calls answered/day by each department. I have also expressed my interest in learning more about quality, and I have worked with the quality assurance manager to create a new introduction to quality presentation for new hires and a digital billboard with live data displayed throughout the area for staff to see. Two projects that I have spent most of my time on have been creating a new agenda for when our remote staff return on-site once a quarter. The idea of this project is to include team building, training, and productive meetings into the agenda. The other project has been to develop a new clinic rotation agenda for staff members. Since 2020 and because of COVID-19, schedulers have not had the opportunity to rotate and shadow at the clinic in the same manner as they did prior to 2020. My task has been to include a robust agenda for when our staff members rotate to their assigned clinics.  

Outside of work hours, I have been spending time with friends, reading books, and enjoying time outside. Not being from Iowa and the Midwest originally, I have spent most of my weekends exploring popular sites in Iowa, and exploring Midwest cities such as Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Kansas City!  

I am looking forward to continuously learning through the remainder of this internship and during my last year as an MHA student!