Ruth Ann Adell
Baylor EMBA, Healthcare Administration, 2022
Medical Director, North Texas Southwest Submarket, USMD Health
“EMBA Takes Physician from Bedside to Boardroom”
By Suzi Morales
In a recent motivational email to her team at USMD/WellMed, Dr. Ruth Ann Adell described a visit to an anonymous patient’s home. The email – part of a regular series of reflections written by Adell or others on her team – recalls how seeing the patient’s everyday life helped to better understand his health challenges.
Adell says she got into medicine for the patient relationships and today that inspiration is part of her identity. She has degrees in genetics medicine. She worked as a family physician for nearly two decades and values the opportunity to have a positive influence on patients’ lives.
“I never thought that I would be the person who would step away from clinical practice,” she said, “but here I am.” As a medical director, she is able to use the leadership skills she honed in the Dallas Executive MBA (EMBA) program at Baylor University Hankamer School of Business to continue serving USMD Health patients.
From practice to management
Adell enrolled in the EMBA program in part because she was interested in bridging the gap between management and physicians.
“There's this battle between the clinical side and the ‘suits’ and there's a lot of resentment on the clinical side when you have the ‘suits’ telling you what to do,” she said.
The EMBA program combined her passion for working with patients with the leadership skills necessary to motivate a team. She also appreciated the flexibility of the program, with classes one weekend a month, and was attracted to the Healthcare Administration Concentration.
During the EMBA program, Adell transitioned from clinician to administration with a position as associate medical director at USMD Health, where she’d been a physician since 2018. During her cohort’s Baylor in Washington, D.C., trip, she got a phone call offering her the job while she was waiting for the bus to the airport. She served in the position for a year and a half. Shortly after she graduated, she was promoted to a medical director position.
As a physician who transitioned to the business side, the EMBA program taught Adell how to handle the practical aspects of running a healthcare facility. Speaking the languages of both business and clinical practice has helped her to bridge the gap she saw between clinicians and the operations side. But while reading spreadsheets and delving into theories of business operations have been important for her, leadership training has been the greatest benefit of the EMBA.
Even before graduation, Adell used the executive coaching each student receives to build the leadership and communication skills she needed when she first transitioned from the clinical side to management.
“I was able to schedule my coaching during a period when I was new in my associate medical director role and it was invaluable for helping me gain some basic leadership and communication skills that I needed to be successful in the transition to a more administrative position,” she said.
Multiplying impact
Today, Adell spends many days touring the facilities of the clinics in her region and building relationships with clinicians. While she is no longer seeing patients, she says she can now help even more people in her current role than she could see as a physician.
“My only focus is taking care of the 90 providers that are under me,” she said. “Whereas I could influence my patient panel of more than 2,000 people as a physician, now that's magnified by helping other people tear down their barriers and be able to do their job better. I'm affecting tens of thousands of patients.”
Outside of work, Adell enjoys creative pursuits including making jewelry and writing short stories. Occasionally, she brings this part of her personality into the workplace as she periodically helps to write the monthly motivational email.
“Many times, I or my staff have been able to intervene in a meaningful way once we better understood the challenges a patient faces. It isn’t convenient. It’s dirty, it’s messy, and it’s sometimes scary or painful,” she wrote in the recent reflection on the patient home visit. “But it is meaningful and always rewarding.”
She concluded the email by encouraging the entire team to view not only patients but also themselves and other team members with empathy. This is just a glimpse into how Adell uses her medical background and leadership training day every day as she manages her team and the health system’s facilities.
“I'm never going to say that I'm perfect. I have stuff to learn every day,” she said. “I will never reach perfection but having that MBA under my belt 100 percent made me a better person overall and a better person for handling this role.”
Learn more here about how the Executive MBA program can help you multiply your impact. You can also Request More Information here.
