Chapter 09: Learning Administrative Approaches by Leading the Myeloma Clinic

Dr. Rodriguez begins this segment by explaining that the Myeloma Clinic was originally jointly managed with Transplant Leukemia services. She served as Clinic Chief of the Lymphoma/Myeloma Section from 1994−1996. Dr. Rodriguez explains what she learned from working in this environment of shared resources and how she acquired basic knowledge of how to assess patient volume and flow and determine hours of clinic operation. Next Dr. Rodriguez explains how the administrative issues shifted once the Myeloma Clinic became autonomous in 2003 and was stressed with challenged of internal utilization of resources. At this point she began her habit of writing reports to ensure transparency. (She notes that she used to have access to downstream revenue reports, but these have since disappeared.) She talks about the biggest lesson she learned at the time: how an individual’s work has an effect on the whole. As an example, Dr. Rodriguez explains that she became aware that the Myeloma Clinic was one of the biggest customers of the CT Scan Unit. She details how this effected operations of the CT Unit and had an effect on other services. She explains that this refined her thinking about how to strategize care delivery in an arena of low resources. Dr. Rodriguez also notes that most physicians tend not to see the big picture in which the deliver care and use resources; she gives examples of stresses to the system that can result. Dr. Rodriguez observes that she began to attend administrator education courses around this time. As an example of slow administrative development at MD Anderson, Dr. Rodriguez notes that she never filled out a for-service charge form until the 1990s. She talks about issues that arose once billing forms were introduced.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1337/thumbnail.jp