Jashan Gill (MHA '24): University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics - Ambulatory Care Operations

Hello from Iowa City! 

I spent my summer at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, completing my administrative internship in Ambulatory Care Operations. Ambulatory Care consists of around 20 areas, with generally the most complex conditions being treated on the main campus. The team is comprised of approx. 1,200 FTEs, most of whom provide direct care or support for in-person visits. The main campus clinics provide post-visit support for encounters that occur at Iowa River Landing (IRL) and the community clinics. This area is responsible for more than 1 million in-person primary encounters per year and additionally provides secondary services including procedures and ancillary visits.

My preceptor was Grant Worthington, Director of Ambulatory Operations (Main Campus). Grant is also an Iowa MHA Alum, and a great resource if you’re interested in the outpatient space! I had the opportunity to involve myself in a variety of projects and observations this summer. My two non-clinic projects included completing a nursing scanning error proposal and SharePoint site development in collaboration with the Central Sterilization Services (CSS) team. Regarding my clinic projects, I had the opportunity to visit all outpatient clinics but worked most closely with Neurosurgery, Urology, Family Medicine, and the Digestive Health Center (DHC).

My larger clinic projects can be categorized in three ways: overall clinic efficiency, procedure suite efficiency, and a MyChart triage project. The efficiency-based projects followed similar processes including completing clinic observations to build a current state process map, gathering clinic visit data both through EPIC and time trials, and finally providing an analysis of the data along with any appropriate recommendations. My procedure suite efficiency project required me to first consolidate three months of data from the six DHC procedure suites, and second, provide the clinic manager with an analysis informative of the several scenarios concerning room utilization. The MyChart tirage project is an effort within the Family Medicine clinic and has three primary goals: To reduce the number of people who need to touch MyChart message for them to be effectively resolved, to set patient expectations for appropriate use, and to create standard response templates for clinical staff when responding to different message requests. The variety of projects provided an enjoyable challenge and served as a great learning experience!

Aside from projects I attended lean training, UIHC Intern Rounding Series, and the Clinic Manager Curriculum Series organized by my preceptor. I additionally participated in a plethora of meetings and completed observations in three outpatient clinics, watched an ACL Reconstruction, and shadowed Emergency Medicine providers in the ED.

Outside of my internship, I spent most of my weekends either exploring Iowa or visiting friends in Chicago. In Iowa, I hiked various trails, spent time reading at the pool, and visited the Maquoketa caves (highly recommend this). In Chicago, I celebrated my birthday, went apartment hunting with a friend, saw an Ed Sheeran concert (my first ever), and went to Lollapalooza. They tell you 10 weeks goes by fast, but my summer truly felt like a fever dream! While I had a great internship experience and am grateful for all the connections I made, I can’t wait to see my classmates again and look forward to the next semester!