A commitment to the profession - Chairman's Profile - Phyllis A. Cowling, FHFMA, CPA, the 52nd chief elected officer of the Healthcare Financial Management Association

Healthcare Financial Management, June, 2002

On June 1, 2002, Phyllis A. Cowling, FHFMA, CPA, became the 52nd chief elected officer of the Healthcare Financial Management Association when she assumed the office of Chairman of the Board of Directors. Cowling, 40, is vice president and CEO at Baptist St. Anthony's Health System (BSA), a 450-bed multicampus system serving Amarillo, Texas, and the surrounding Texas Panhandle area.

"HFMA always has been a very important part of my professional life," Cowling said in a recent conversation with HEALTHCARE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT. "But it was an unimaginable privilege to have been asked, and elected, to serve on the National Board of Directors. I've never been associated with a more professional, more intelligent, and more dedicated group of volunteers. I intend to spend this coming year as HFMA's Chairman working to develop and make optimum use of our members' individual and collective creativity to improve our healthcare organizations, ourselves, and HFMA."

A Winding Career Path

Cowling's first career of choice involved neither health care nor finance. The youngest of four children growing up in a small Texas town, where sports and outdoor activities were encouraged, she wanted to be the first female quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys!

But even as the years passed, "healthcare CFO" was conspicuous in its absence from Cowling's list of potential careers. "Some days I wanted to be a pharmacist, and some days I wanted to be an attorney," she confides. "I didn't even become interested in accounting and finance until my second year in college. My father suggested I take some business courses, with the idea that they would be useful to me no matter what I did."

As a result, Cowling took her first accounting class, which ultimately led to receiving a degree in accounting from East Texas State University (today Texas A&M University - Commerce) in 1983. Then, unknowingly following the common career path of many healthcare financial managers, she accepted a job as a staff accountant for a major accounting firm. In her case, it was Arthur Andersen, and one of her early assignments was with a healthcare client. Cowling found the engagement enjoyable and satisfying, and decided to request additional healthcare audits, which she was given.

Despite an affinity for the work and being promoted to a senior auditor position in her second year with Andersen, however, Cowling knew she did not want to be an auditor all her life. She returned to school in 1985 to pursue a graduate degree at The University of Texas at Austin with the thought of perhaps teaching at the college level. "I toyed with the idea of seeking a master's of health administration degree, but I wasn't ready to commit to health care at that time, and I thought an MBA would provide me with more options."

Still, Cowling maintained an interest in health care, even writing her master's thesis on Medicare's Prospective Payment System: The Impact on Hospitals. "You have to remember," Cowling chuckles, "this was 1987 and PPS was still pretty new"

MBA in hand, Cowling contacted the Andersen partners and managers she had worked with previously and advised them of her continuing interest in healthcare accounting and finance. Andersen healthcare partner Roger Pickett suggested an audit position with Memorial Hospital of Garland (a Dallas suburb).

"I told Roger I really wasn't interested in internal auditing, but he felt there was a good possibility it could lead to me becoming the CFO there in a few years. Well, I was 25 years old at the time, and that sounded pretty exciting.

"I interviewed with Garland Memorial's CEO, Gary Brock, and was hired as the hospital's internal auditor. Four months later the CFO left, and Gary asked me to serve as interim CFO. A month later, my position was changed from interim to permanent, and off I went on the most incredible learning experience!"

Cowling modestly credits her success serving as a CFO so early in her career to circumstance and people she worked with. "It was a small hospital with a small management team, so I got to wear a variety of hats on a variety of projects--everything from skilled nursing proposals to marketing. And I consider myself so fortunate to have worked with Gary as my first CEO. He shared so much of what he did with me, and helped me to learn much about hospital operations as well as hospital finance. And it was from him that I learned one of the fundamental management principles I use today: 'Hire good people and let them do their jobs.'"

In 1991, Garland Memorial was acquired by Baylor Health Care System. Although the acquisition was an amicable one, Cowling felt she was not yet ready for the environment represented by a large system like Baylor, and the transaction afforded her the opportunity to take a position as assistant administrator and CFO at Hunt Memorial Hospital District in Greenville, Texas, near Dallas.

Then, in 1993, Cowling was approached regarding the CFO position at St. Anthony's Hospital in Amarillo, and although St. Anthony's was owned by a larger system (at the time, Incarnate Word Health Services; today CHRISTUS Health), she accepted the offer. Following the pattern of merger/acquisition that is the legacy of healthcare organizations of the 1990s, in 1995, St. Anthony's and a competing Amarillo organization, High Plains Baptist Hospital, embarked on the merger of the two entities to form BSA.