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Maddie Meyer - UIHC Community Clinics (MHA '27)

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Hello from Iowa City! My name is Maddie Meyer, and this summer I had the opportunity to serve as an Administrative Intern with the University of Iowa Health Care Community Clinics. Community Clinics are located across Iowa and provide a wide variety of services, including QuickCare, urgent care, family medicine, pediatrics, specialty care, and more. Through these locations, UI Health Care can bring care closer to patients and communities throughout the state. During my internship, I had the opportunity to work under the leadership of Debbie Herold, Zoe Horak, Bekka Cappussi, and Ryon Rasmussen. Their guidance allowed me to gain exposure to many different areas of ambulatory operations, planning, and service expansion while learning more about the work that happens behind the scenes to support clinics across Iowa. One of my main projects this summer was developing a business plan for expanding Mohs dermatology services in the Quad Cities. This project allowed me to explore the operation...
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Olivia Hedrick - Finance and Accounting Services at UIHC (MHA '27)

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 Hi everyone!  My name is Olivia Hedrick, and I am one of the interns with the Finance and Accounting Services (FAS) department at UIHC! This summer I have had the privilege of working under my preceptor, Beth Jaggers, and her financial strategy team. I work off campus in the Health Care Support Services Building (HSSB) in Coralville. I am grateful to everyone I have been able to learn from this summer, and it has been such a valuable experience! Over the course of my internship, I have had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects. I analyzed observation hour data across all three medical campuses in order to identify the top 5 units at each location with the highest observation hours. From there, I found areas with the best throughput opportunities. I was then able to sit at an executive leadership meeting to go over the data I pulled and analyzed. This project gave me full-circle insight into the life cycle of a project, from the very beginning of pulling data t...
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April Arend - Medical Center North Liberty (MHA'27)

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Hello everyone! My name is April Arend, and this summer I completed my administrative internship at the University of Iowa Health Care at the Medical Center North Liberty (MCNL) campus. MCNL is an Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Specialty Hospital with 36 beds that opened in April 2025. This summer I was able to work with Bryan Garter, Director of Operations, and Amy O’Deen, Chief Administrative Officer. In addition to my preceptors, I worked with many department leaders on strategic initiatives and different operational projects. Throughout my summer at MCNL, I have been exposed to many facets of the hospital. I participated in senior leadership meetings and learned about how to be an effective healthcare leader directly from Bryan and Amy. I participated in weekly tracers, staff appreciation events, and community engagement events (ex: volunteering at the North Liberty food pantry). Outside of meetings, I spent time shadowing child life, supply chain, the night shift house operations ...
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Emma Bryer - University of Iowa Patient Access Center (MHA '27)

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Hello all!  My name is Emma Bryer, and I am currently the administrative intern with the UI Patient Access Center (PAC) under Keri Semrau! The PAC is located in HSSB in Coralville, but they handle scheduling appointments for patients across UI Healthcare. There are essentially two parts to the department, PAC schedulers, and the ICC, which focuses primarily on nurse triage.  As the PAC is the centralized scheduling hub across UI Healthcare, we support patients by implementing efficient processes and improving access to care. Alongside Keri, who is the director, I also work with other managers, including operations, ancillary services, and training. This has allowed me to work on projects in various areas, with a focus on workflow and quality improvements.  One of the projects I worked on this summer was gathering benchmarking data from the Patient Access Collaborative. I grabbed notable data and built a 130-slide presentation comparing UI HealthCare’s performance to overa...
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Austin Synoground - St. Judes Research Hospital (JD/MHA '27)

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Hi folks! My name is Austin Synoground, and this summer I had the great pleasure of serving as a remote legal intern with the Office of Legal Services at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.  St. Jude is a truly unique organization. Founded in 1962 by Danny Thomas, the mission of the hospital is to prevent and cure pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Whereas most hospitals fund operations through patient service revenue, government reimbursements, and private insurance payments, St. Jude relies primarily on public and private donations. These donations allow the hospital to provide life-saving medical care to 9,000 patients annually, and the families of those patients never have to pay for treatment, travel, housing or food.   Like the hospital, the Office of Legal Services is one-of-a-kind. Professional, clever, kind, the team is exactly what you would hope to see in a children’s hospital. With nearly twenty attorneys, the legal team’s deep ...
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Maddy Wilcox - Stead Family Children's Hospital (MHA '27)

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Summer 2026 has been filled with incredible opportunities, meaningful experiences, and lasting relationships. As I wrap up my summer, I have taken time to reflect on everything I have learned throughout this journey. I had the privilege of serving as the Administrative Intern at the Stead Family Children's Hospital under the leadership of Jim Leste and John Heinemann over the past 10 weeks. During my internship, I contributed to nearly 15 high-impact projects spanning multiple service lines and administrative functions across the children's hospital. While every project provided valuable experience, three of my primary initiatives included developing the first Stead Family Children's Hospital staff newsletter to strengthen leadership communication, creating provider and specialty scorecards to identify scheduling inefficiencies within the Pediatric Specialty Clinic, and designing an executive NICU dashboard that consolidates key performance indicators into a single reportin...
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Emily Sutter - Advocate Christ Medical Center (MHA '27)

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Hello Hello! My name is Emily Sutter, and I have spent the past 9 weeks living in Chicago, IL. I am the Administrative and Operations intern at Advocate Christ Medical Center (CMC), which is one of the Illinois Flagship hospitals, and my preceptor is Cameron Lewis (Chief Operating Officer). As I am writing this blog, I am just about to start my final week here. Time flies and I am having the best time! My first couple days of my internship were quite unique, I attended our Illinois Leadership Advance where I heard from some amazing leaders like Eugene Woods, CEO of Advocate Health and Kevin Warren, President and CEO of the Chicago Bears. This experience energized me, and I felt so grateful to be learning from a team committed to shaping the future of health care. On my second day I attended the groundbreaking event of the new Trinity Hospital on the south side of Chicago that is part of our 1-billion-dollar investment in Chicago’s south side.  I have been involved in multiple proje...
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