Kiersten Bahr- Iowa Healthcare, Patient Access Center (MHA '25)

 Hello from Iowa City! 

This summer I have had the privilege of interning at the Patient Access Center (PAC) with University of Iowa Healthcare. The PAC is the contact center for scheduling at the university making it a gateway to access for patients. During FY24, the PAC scheduled nearly 900,000 appointments for patients within Iowa Healthcare amongst many specialties. The acquisition of Mercy has caused an increased workload for the PAC as the patient access specialists will now be taking on some of their call volume as well moving into FY25. My preceptor Keri Semrau, who is the director of the PAC and Integrated Call Center (ICC) oversees the integration of these services and ensures smooth transition. I am also working closely with Michael Hesseltine (ancillary services) and Neil Christiansen (operations) who are directors within the PAC on various projects throughout the summer. 

One of the projects I was assigned for the summer was Patient Access Collaborative 2024 benchmarking comparisons. As the contact center for the University, quality in access and operations is key to our success. Understanding where the University stands compared to other AMCs across the country lets us know where there is room for growth as well as where we are outperforming others. Now that the gathering of data is complete, I am preparing to present to a larger group of executive leaders to represent how critical the PAC is to day-to-day operations in various other hospital areas. 

A second project I oversaw each month was consolidating and updating the financial reports for the executive leadership team. I was tasked with using the information from the flex budgets of all areas under the PAC and ICC and showing month to month as well as the year-to-date trends. The number of scheduled appointments compared to the goals set by PAC leadership is also an important metric in this monthly report to the leadership team. This project is a bit of a revolving door and never really ends as once I am finished with one month; the next month’s financials are dropping. I enjoy having this level of financial exposure to help develop my financial literacy and excel skills. 

The final project I have worked on is a “disruptive patient” workflow document. I was given this opportunity after expressing my interest in quality and patient experience to the leadership team. The original workflow document was very robotic and reactive, so I made it my mission to make it far more proactive and understanding for the representees on the other end of the line. Changing much of the verbiage from “I know” language to “I understand” and handling many of the possible red flags before they happen were just a few of the modifications I suggested. 

As an intern with the University of Iowa, I have also worked on the space survey and toured many parts of the campus I had not seen before. Learning what each department requires for resources and space is a unique experience to have while in this internship. I was lucky to have locations such as the emergency department and a few of the ICUs which were very eye-opening experiences to tour and learn about as part of the survey.  This, along with the seminars and tours I, along with the rest of the graduate assistants get to go on, has been a great learning opportunity to see various parts of academic medicine. 

Outside of work, I had time for myself this summer by taking a trip to Okoboji with 65 family members for our biannual family reunion and exploring Iowa City. I have enjoyed baseball games, farmers markets and trying new restaurants while the city is a little less congested. I am looking forward to getting back in the swing of things here at CPH in just a few short weeks and ready to meet an amazing new cohort of first years!