Summer Internship: Mercy Hospital Ada

By: Hannah Fink (MHA ’19)

Hello from Ada, Oklahoma!

This summer I have enjoyed the opportunity to be an administrative intern at Mercy Hospital Ada. The Mercy ministry is located within the states of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Additional clinics, outpatient services, and outreach ministries are in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Mercy Hospital Ada is a 156-bed community hospital with multiple specialty clinics. My experience has expanded well beyond the hospital walls. I have attended biweekly Mercy West regional leadership meetings in Oklahoma City, as well as leadership events in Joplin, MO and Rogers, AR.

I have been working alongside an astounding preceptor and accessible senior leadership team. My preceptor believes I should not only gain experience through project work, but also by shadowing and working in different hospital departments in order to benefit from various perspectives. I have spent time in dietary services, environmental services, emergency medical services, the operating room, and much more. 

Much like my shadowing opportunities, my project involvement has been very diverse. I have gained exposure in several financial projects. These projects involed compiling capital budget requests from different departments, reviewing charges from virtual services the hospital receives, creating a pro forma to review potential expansion of the sleep center, as well as working with a nearby specialty hospital on contract negotiations for emergency department services. Amongst all these projects and many more, I found a strong interest in the community paramedicine program established here in Ada. I developed flow charts and a dashboard to help identify patients eligible for the program, which resulted in decreased use of the emergency department and reduced Medicare readmissions. I was honored to also assist with writing an abstract on the success of this program for an innovation conference occurring in the fall. 

Outside of work, I have appreciated the Oklahoma sunshine, a weekend trip to Texas, and several remarkable museums, particularly the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum. To fully embrace living here, I attended a snake class to learn identification tips between the array of venomous and nonvenomous snakes in the state (60 species to be exact). In other words, I have enjoyed my time in Ada and surrounding cities, but I look forward to my return to Iowa, a state with fewer venomous snakes! I am eager to hear about my classmates' summer internships and am excited to reconnect with friends in Iowa City.