University of Iowa Health Management & Policy

By: Zachary Witt (MHA '21) Hello from the Mississippi River!   This summer I had the opportunity to intern at MercyOne Clinton Medical Center with Amy Berentes, Executive VP/COO/CNO. Clinton Medical Center is a faith-based, full-service community health hospital with 163 licensed beds (census of approximately 30) serving multiple rural communities alongside the Mississippi River in both Eastern Iowa and Northwestern Illinois. The organizational structure is unique as there is a sole Eastern Iowa Regional Leadership Team that manages Dubuque Medical Center, Clinton Medical Center, Clinton North Health Plaza Clinic, and three Critical Access Hospitals located in Dyersville, Guttenberg and Elkader, Iowa.   As the lone Eastern Iowa Region intern I had the privilege of observing all leaders at all facilities during my eight weeks. I served as a member of the Eastern Iowa Regional Leadership Team as I participated in every single meeting my preceptor attended – from any small touch ...

By: Vanessa Savage Hello from Pittsburgh! I have had the privilege to intern with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) for the last 10 weeks, and it has been everything I could have hoped for and more. UPMC is an Integrated Delivery and Finance Health System comprised of four major areas: provider services, insurance services, international provider services, and enterprise services. My internship is focused primarily within provider services, specifically here in Pittsburgh at Magee-Womens Hospital which is one of 40 UPMC hospitals across Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland. Magee-Womens provides a wide variety of services to its patient population, however it is best known for delivering over 10,000 babies annually in addition to caring for about 1,500 critically-ill newborns in the NICU. My role this summer is focused primarily with University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP), the physicians’ group working within UPMC in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh. The br...

By: Brigette Boyle Hello, everybody! It’s crazy to think that in a year that has seemed endless at times, the summer is quickly coming to a close! I am currently wrapping up my time as a Graduate Administrative Intern at Northwestern Medicine (NM). After my initial plan to complete the Administrative Internship Program with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN was canceled due to safety concerns from COVID-19, I was incredibly fortunate to secure another position with NM in the West Region Performance Improvement Office (PIO).   Northwestern Medicine is a 10-hospital premier integrated academic health system that stretches across the greater-Chicagoland area. The West Region, where my efforts have been focused, consists of three acute-care hospitals, one rehabilitation hospital, and one critical access hospital. This is my third summer with NM, and I can truly say that each experience continues to be better than the last.   My work has been a mix of both COVID-related and non-COVI...

By: Ian Rowland Interning with University of Iowa Physicians (UIP) has been a fantastic experience, and I encourage any aspiring healthcare professional to seek a similar experience. The UIP internship has a duration of 10 weeks, it pays a monthly stipend, and it is based mainly in Iowa City and Coralville. UIP takes on 2-3 interns every summer, all of who are current MHA students at Iowa.   When searching for internships, I wanted a position that would be project-based, would require me to practice skills taught during the first year of the MHA program, and would teach me about the functioning of a large healthcare organization. Interning with UIP has not fallen short on any of my expectations. Weekly intern roundings at the UIHC have exposed me to many different departments within the hospital, while my projects helped me understand strategic and financial factors that affect UIP. Most of my work has been with UI Health Ventures (UIHV), which is an organization that UIP and UIHC ...

By: Maura Saltzman Greetings from Iowa City! After my original summer internship plans were affected by COVID, I was grateful to be provided with the opportunity to continue my graduate assistantship through the summer as the Community Engagement Intern for the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) All of Us Community Engagement Center (CEC) – we like acronyms! My preceptor is Dr. Rima Afifi, who is also a professor and the Director for Graduate Studies for the Department of Community and Behavioral Health in the College of Public Health. The NNLM CEC oversees the Community Engagement Network (CEN), which was established through a partnership between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) All of Us Research Program and the National Library of Medicine. The CEN consists of eight regional medical libraries and thousands of member libraries whose collective mission is to improve access to biomedical information, support communities with consumer health information, and rais...

By: Jake Teumer Hello from Kingwood, Texas. From June 1, 2020 until now I have had the privilege of being the administrative intern here at HCA Houston Kingwood. This facility is a full service 419-bed acute care hospital that provides care to the northeast Houston community. In this position, I report directly to the CEO John Corbeil. From the start the team here was very inviting in making me a member of the hospital’s senior leadership team. During my tenure, I have been fortunate to work with each member of administration in various capacities, affording me a breadth of experiences and tasks. I took an initiative to expose myself to as many clinical encounters, strategic and operational meetings, and executive-level discussions as possible. I intimately learned the responsibilities of hospital directors via one-on-one conversations as well as spent many hours shadowing frontline employees at on-site and off-site departments. I have been able to help facilitate EOC rounds in prepara...

By: Jess Shreeves I began my administrative internship at the Veteran's Health Administration (VHA) in late May of 2020 and since then I have worked from home or from within the walls of the VHA facilities, located here in Iowa City, Iowa. In terms of how I became connected to my preceptor for the internship, Dr. Broderick, Director of Palliative Care and Hospice Services at the VHA, agreed to become my sponsor after our shared Iyengar Yoga instructor continued to persuade me to reach out to her (my instructor knew that Dr. Broderick and I shared similar perspectives related to global health studies). Dr. Broderick and I do share some perspectives which we have individually gained in global health environments. In fact, Dr. Broderick usually leads a group of fellows to Southern India, for the month of December, to gain perspectives on effective community-led health care. On a different note, I do work with very sensitive data and a very unique, vulnerable health population; I think...