He also says a supportive environment is critical.
“You must work in an organization that is a resource to help you succeed, because when you move out of the purely clinical or clinical administrative jobs like division chair, department chair, program director, even CMO or VPMA [vice president of medical affairs], those are doctor jobs,” he says. “When you really become a doctor doing administrative work, unless it’s in your background and in your skill set, I think it’s important to work in an organization that is going to support you in your continued growth.
“Because these are jobs that I think you grow into.” —TC
I think one of the things that makes hospitalists fairly natural fits for the hospital leadership positions is that a hospital is a very complicated environment. You have pockets of enormous expertise that sometimes function like silos. Being a hospitalist actually trains you well for those things.
—Brian Harte, MD, SFHM, president, South Pointe Hospital, Warrenville Heights, Ohio, SHM board member
Dr. Nasim Afsar
Associate Chief Medical Officer, UCLA Hospitals, Los Angeles
Path to the C-suite: Residency at UCLA; advanced training program in quality improvement at Intermountain Healthcare Dr. Afsar wasn’t aiming for a top administrative job in a hospital. But, during her time spent working as a hospitalist, she started noticing trouble within the system. Eventually, she wanted to try to solve problems in a way that would have a ripple effect. Inspired, she ventured into quality improvement.
“I’m very passionate about helping the patient in front of me, whether it’s helping them get better or helping them during a really challenging time of their life,” she says. “But there’s something about feeling that the improvements that you make will not just impact the person in front of you, but the thousands of patients that come after them.”
Part of her job is instilling in other healthcare providers the sense that they themselves are agents of change. One big difference in her administrative job and clinical work is how to gauge success.
“The job is a lot harder than it seems. In our clinical world, I know what constitutes a good job. I know that when I’m on service, I get up early in the morning, I come in, I pre-round on my patients extensively, I read up on a couple of different things, I go out onto the wards with my team,” she explains. “This type of leadership role, I think, is more challenging. Initiatives that you do to improve care in one area could have detrimental or challenging impacts on another set of stakeholders or care area. You’re constantly navigating the system.” —TC
By nature when you’re a hospitalist, you are a problem solver. You don’t shy away from problems that you don’t understand.
—Nasim Afsar, MD, SFHM, associate chief medical officer, UCLA Hospitals, Los Angeles, SHM board member
Dr. Patrick Torcson
Chief Integration Officer, St. Tammany Parish Hospital, Covington, La.
Path to the C-Suite: Residency at Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans; private internist; director of hospital medicine at St. Tammany Parish Hospital Dr. Torcson recently became his hospital’s first chief integration officer, a job in which he promotes clinical quality and service quality using information technology.
But it was never about a promotion, he says.
“It’s really been more about just trying to provide quality care and make contributions to fixing a broken healthcare system,” he says. “Staying focused on that personal journey has really brought me to where I am.”