Summer Internship: UCHealth

By: Cole Malcolm

Greetings from Colorado!

This summer I’ve had the incredible opportunity of interning at UCHealth- University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, CO. UCHealth is an academic health system affiliated with University of Colorado School of Medicine and has hospitals and clinics located across the state of Colorado. During my time here I have had the privilege of working with Operations team, specifically with Karen Lovett, Senior Operations Director. The internship’s first three weeks operated virtually, and then we’ve been on site since end of June.  

The main project I am working on currently is a vendor and contractor management with regards to facility and procedural area access, badging & security, and supply chain and contract management. Pre-COVID we thought we had a tight process when it came to vendor credentialing and badging, but since changing our facility access and visitor management policies due to COVID, we’ve realized that we have opportunities to grow in this area. The main project involves data analysis, observational studies, and process mapping to identify gaps in our vendor onboarding process and use of our credentialing software. The end goal is to establish unit accountability for verifying that individual performing work have proper badging and credentialing, ensure COVID-screening is accessible for vendors and contractors providing services to UCHealth, and educate supervisors and managers on the policy and process.  

This project has been rewarding and has provided me lots of opportunity to learn about the OR processes, security, badging and credentialing, visitor management, and COVID-screening best practices. In addition to this project, I’ve also been working on developing a dashboard with Respiratory Therapy and do a budget and proposal for a cost-center build out for Patient Transport. 

Outside of project work I have had many other learning opportunities. My second week here we spent 40 hours doing Greenbelt Process Improvement and Project Management training where I learned about a variety of PI/PM tools and how to facilitate a PI-event and best practices for project management. This training was valuable and I’ve used many of the tools during my project work with Karen. Additionally, we’ve participate in weekly lunch and learns with the COO Tom Gronow, as well as other guest speakers from the senior leadership team. We’ve had lots of opportunity to network and meet with various people around the organization and they have all been incredible receptive to mentorship and coaching of the interns which has been a big value-add for me and my professional development.

Outside of work, I’ve had a great summer living with my boyfriend, Jacob, as well as one of my co-interns Chris. We’ve spent tons of time in the mountains and hiking all across the state from Keystone, to Boulder, to Colorado Springs, and more. We even went to the sand dunes and tried sand-surfing—where Jacob actually ended up tearing his MCL. But on the bright side, I got to go to UCHealth urgent care, the brand new orthopedics clinic, and physical therapy services and hear all about his experienceJ He’s okay now though, no worries!   

Can’t wait to see you all this fall and hear more about your experiences! I miss you all so much! 

Cole