What goes around, comes around

MGMA Connexion, Jul 2006 by Redling, Bob

How internships, mentoring and volunteering help the profession

Intern Dan Viens doesn't like to tell people he has an administrative internship at Children's Hospital in Boston.

"I tell my friends that I'm on my way to my job, not an internship," says the 20-yearold, who is an administrative intern in the hospital's Plastic Surgery Division. "Saying that it's work automatically puts it at a higher level of importance."

Viens, who expects to complete his bachelor of arts degree in health administration at Stonehill College, Easton, Mass., in 2007, is one of many students who each year gain valuable experience through internships offered by medical practices and other health organizations.

Offering students internships - paid or unpaid, graduate or undergraduate - as well as paid residencies for recent graduates, is just one way medical practice administrators fulfill a professional responsibility. Each year, thousands of medical practice administrators find creative ways to improve their communities, enhance their medical practices and advance their profession. Along the way, each finds that volunteering returns an invaluable boost to personal and career satisfaction. Their ranks include a growing number of administrators whose efforts to give back to their profession include offering internships, mentoring and volunteering.

Interns add energy

You don't have to work hard to convince Craig J. Nesta, JD, MBA, CMl'E, MGMA member and administrator, Division of Plastic Surgery, Children's Hospital, Boston, that interns are a worthwhile investment of time and energy. After several years of relying on recruits such as Viens to assist in his department, Nesta helped establish a broader internship program throughout the hospital. Today, Children's Hospital recruits students from 20 universities across New England. They work stints ranging from a few weeks to a few months in the organization's ambulatory clinical departments.

"There really doesn't have to be an issue about the size of the practice," Nesta says. "You just need to be motivated and passionate about internships and understand the value they add."

Many practices tap interns' talents to fill in for staff on extended leave. Practices sometimes pay interns from budgeted but unpaid salary funds freed up when staff members leave employment in midyear.

"You can offer a lot to the intern without necessarily offering pay," says Nesta, who teaches other organizations how to set up internships. Although some internships and residencies in the MGMA and ACMPE Internship-Residency Experience do not provide salaries, all offer hands-on work and a chance to discover a professional option that many students might overlook.

What's the intern's greatest fear? Viens says it's not getting the opportunity to get involved.

"Every intern is worried about spending the entire time photocopying and filing, but the administrators here at Children's work hard to make sure that isn't going to be the norm," he says.

There should always be plenty for an intern to do, whether it is at a major hospital, a large multispedalty practice, a small medical group or a medium-sized, 15-physician practice such as Neurological Associates Inc. of Richmond, Va.

"This is the Excel generation at your command," says Lucien VV. Roberts III, MHA, FACMPH, an MGMA member and the group's administrator. "These students are savvy at any kind of analysis you want to do in terms of production or expenses."

Roberts says interns have helped clear out a backlog of his "want-to-do-it-when-there's-time" projects, such as:

* Setting up HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) training programs;

* Loading fee schedules into practice management systems to check payers' contract compliance;

* Analyzing the impact of third-party payer authorization processes; and

* Conducting time-motion studies.

"We have three graduate students from VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond) here now. They are taking systems analysis skills from the classroom and putting them to work in a real-work situation," says Roberts, who began his career with a one-year residency as part of obtaining his master's degree in health administration from VCU.

It's a two-way street

Interns can do much more than help with minor clerical tasks or tend the photocopier - they can invigorate those who supervise them, says Viens' supervisor, Ronald R. Heald, an MGMA member and administrative coordinator of Children's, Division of Plastic Surgery.

"Just as an intern is coming into your practice and looking to learn, it's an opportunity for the manager to learn as well," Heald says. "Giving that time to mentor an intern and getting involved will help you as a manager as much as it will help the intern."

Roberts agrees. "Interns get the creative juices flowing because they will ask questions about things that you might have taken for granted. Students' questions about projects I've assigned them have led me to think about things differently and expand some of those projects in needed directions."