A Career in Healthcare | Catherine Barrett
Catherine Barrett is a Senior Healthcare Consultant at Pershing, Yoakley & Associates [PYA], a national healthcare consulting firm that specializes in helping clients navigate regulatory compliance, mergers, acquisitions, governance, business valuations, best practices, tax compliance, business analysis, and operations optimization.
Having worked for Texas Children’s Hospital – among others – prior to joining PYA, Catherine has a background in hospital operations. Today Catherine works with health systems or networks to improve healthcare-related and business processes, while also advising on strategy and payment models.
Career Success Q&A
What do you like most about your work?
I love the variety of work I’m getting to do right now. Not only are all my projects different from one another, but I’m also getting to learn new information and skills for all of them.
Another part of my job I can’t get enough of now is how creative I’m allowed to be. My office encourages taking different approaches and exploring different ideas, which has led to a high-energy workspace where we can all get excited about creating something we believe in.
How long have you worked in this role?
I started in mid-February, and was previously at a children’s hospital in Texas for just shy of two years.
What kind of formal schooling or training do you have?
I have a master’s in health services administration from the University of Kansas Medical Center, and a Bachelor of Arts in English (See, everyone? Lots of opportunities out there for Lit majors!).
After graduate school, I completed an administrative fellowship at Texas Children’s Hospital, which was by far the most instructive and educational experience of my life.
What kind of experience did you have before you began your career?
Prior to grad school, I had never worked in healthcare. I had worked in catering, teaching, and publishing. So when I started grad school and was entering a new industry, I wanted to understand it from the inside.
I worked part-time registering patients at a local surgery center, and did three internships: one in a cancer center interviewing patients about their experiences, one at a local safety net hospital, and one in a physicians group, where my main contribution was analyzing their utilization of phone interpretation services to see if it would be more cost-effective to have on-site interpreters instead.
I sought out the Administrative Fellowship to really, thoroughly broaden those experiences.
Most recent to my current job, I was a manager over six departments: three had to do with patient experiences (like my first internship) and one was interpretation services (like my last internship!).
Do you have a mission statement or a guiding philosophy for your career?
Always be helping.
What excites you most about your career right now?
Healthcare is going through so much of a changing landscape–it’s very exciting, and it touches so many different fields.
Population health touches on the social determinants of health, the financial drivers of the marketplace, the give and take of sharing risks and gains, and the behavioral economics that shape how people make decisions.
There is so much to learn!
What excites you about the future of your career?
Right now, I feel a massive sense of possibility in my career. With only a few exceptions (like becoming an Olympic athlete), nothing seems off-limits.
How often do you read?
I’m an avid reader–of books and articles and anything else with words on it.
What books would you recommend to other people trying to improve themselves professionally?
I read The Go-Giver (Bob Burg & John David Mann) a few months ago, which is a short, easy-to-read parable that I found very meaningful at a time when I was disillusioned about my field.
Lean In (Sheryl Sandberg) had a massive impact on me–and I didn’t expect it to.
If you’re in healthcare, anything by Atul Gawande is a must-read, and if you’re not in healthcare, you should still read his stuff.
Is there another type of media you regularly consume as a means of continuing your professional education?
I read a lot of articles–healthcare-related and otherwise. I follow a few blogs, and received some professional publications.
I get daily emails from Modern Healthcare, Becker’s Hospital Review, and the Advisory Board. My company has a blog called Bridging Business and Healthcare that I follow as well–and not only because my boss runs it!
Lately, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying LinkedIn Pulse. Seriously. Love it. I’m not an auditory learner, so podcasts don’t do much for me.
LinkedIn Pulse. Have you been on there yet? Go. Now.
I also used to follow Careerealism, when I was trying to figure out how to get jobs. I still stop by every now and then, and find it valuable.
Do you have a regular routine you use to ensure you’re always improving yourself professionally?
I read daily–at least one thing in my field, and hopefully several things outside of it.
Though I don’t follow a specific routine with it, I like to chat to other people in my field about my experiences and theirs, and do so whenever I find myself thinking, “I haven’t talked to so-and-so in a few weeks.”
What is the best career advice you ever received?
Don’t ever let anyone else put their hands on the steering wheel of your career.
Who are your most influential mentors and why do you admire them?
My former teachers remain some of my most important mentors. I’ve stayed in touch with several of them for years.
One of my bosses from an internship I had in grad school has also been a source of fantastic counsel and support.
Two of the greatest mentors I have the fortune to be in contact with are just a few years older than me–they are close enough that they understand what I’m going through in a more recent way, but far enough along that they can have more perspective than I do.
As for people I don’t know, I read pretty much anything Sheryl Sandberg writes the way someone dying of thirst drinks water.
Additionally, as cliché as it sounds, Oprah made an impression on me very early on, and I try to remember to look to her model of using her success to give opportunities to others.
What are a few of your short-term and long-term career goals?
Short-term: Become a well-rounded asset to my consulting firm. I have so much to learn now that I feel more like an investment, and my goal is to show everyone that I can achieve a good payoff.
Long-term: I’d love to be part of the efforts that finally, truly unite medical healthcare with the social determinants of health. True, holistic healthcare still eludes the vast majority of people, and I want to help resolve that.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced over the course of your career?
Every position I’ve taken has essentially required a completely new set of skills and knowledge.
Every project I did during my fellowship was massively different from the others. Just when I was figuring out that system, I took a job in Patient & Family Services, and was suddenly responsible for important and sensitive things like social work and medical interpretation (FYI, I don’t speak Spanish; which was especially challenging).
Now, I’m learning a lot about grants, regulations, and payment models.
How are you working to overcome this challenge?
Variety is the spice of life!
It’s hard for me, but being vulnerable and open to being wrong is an important part of taking on these new challenges.
I read a lot, but I also have to admit to my colleagues when I have no earthly idea what they’re talking about and need some extra explanations.
What have you found to work really well for fostering your own professional growth?
I have a work journal where at the end of the day (most of the time), I write down the highlight of the day and at least one thing I learned.
I tend to be pretty conscious of any feedback I get, and want to make sure anything negative doesn’t happen again.
The best solution I’ve found [for addressing my shortcomings] is reporting to the person who gave me that feedback, on any efforts I’m taking to resolve the issue.
What is a professional challenge you’re still looking for a solutions to?
I’m still working on a more concrete long-term plan.
Some days I’m convinced I want my PhD and to go the academic route, some days I want to get back to the hospital, some days I’m ready to write my novel.
I don’t think my plan will ever be exactly set, but I am trying to be more consistent!
[BRENDAN’S NOTES] I’m not sure that any of Catherine’s aspirations have to come with the opportunity cost of one or more of the others.
In my own experience I’ve seen plenty of academics that serve the private sector simultaneously. I’ve seen even more who have jumped back and forth between the worlds of academia and industry during different seasons of life.
The entire premise of Chandler Bolt’s book, Book Launch, and his latest business, The Self-Publishing School, is that everyday people can become published authors in under 90 days.
Not to say that each of these things won’t require a considerable amount of dedicated focus. Trying to do all of these things at once is certainly a recipe for disaster, but life is made up of many seasons.
Each of those seasons will have a different focus. If you are careful to “[never] let anyone else put their hands on the steering wheel of your career,” you’ll have a lot to say on what the focus of each season is going to be.
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What is the best way for people to connect with you?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinembarrett
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