What is your role at Yale School of Medicine? ![]()
I am the Associate Director of Clinical Affairs in Internal Medicine. Our team assists over 600 clinically active physicians and advanced practice providers with many services, including coordinating their payor credentialing, billing and coding support and training, physician wRVU and patient access metric reporting, Epic utilization assistance, and many other program initiatives.
Why did you want to work at Yale School of Medicine (YSM)?
Growing up in Connecticut, hearing about how prestigious Yale was and knowing it was constantly ranked as one of the best places to work, working here was a goal of mine for a long time. However, it wasn't until I got into the healthcare field that I felt I had the niche that I needed to find the right position.
What recent projects have you been involved in that you are particularly proud of?
We have a newer team within Clinical Affairs, called the EHR Utilization team, that’s helping the physicians work efficiency in Epic, our electronic medical system. Epic is not always intuitive and there are so many ways to do one thing. The team works with physician leadership to identify best practices and determines the easiest way for our clinicians to complete their work. The more we can do to help reduce clicks and screen jumps, the better! Overall, we hope to improve the physicians’ experience with Epic.
Along with Dr. Lynn Tanoue, our vice chair of Clinical Affairs, this team developed the Epic Stars (Solutions That Achieve Results) Training for our physicians. It was an eight-week program that launched during the fall of 2021 and again in the spring of 2022. It was very interactive, and it covered all the helpful tips, customizations, and tools that our team has collected from the last couple of years. Clinicians were able to walk away from those training sessions with a lot of these tools, right at their fingertips!
Based on the positive feedback from the program, our team recently presented a poster at the Yale New Haven Health/Yale Medicine/YSM 2022 Safety, Quality and Experience Conference, called the Impact of Epic Training Targeted to Internal Medicine Physicians Based on Self-Assessed Proficiency. We compared physician pre-and post-survey results to the question, "How comfortable are you with these certain functionalities in Epic?" which physicians took before and immediately after their Stars Training sessions. The presentation showcased how physicians were uncomfortable with certain functionalities before the program and how they became very comfortable with them afterwards. We even used the results from the Fall to reframe some of the sessions that re-launched in the Spring. Our faculty feedback is invaluable to us.
Going forward, what kinds of projects will your team be working on?
We are currently working on a lot of new initiatives, which we are very excited about. After the success of our Epic instructional videos we decided to implement that training style to how we teach billing and coding. Again, with Dr. Tanoue’s leadership and insights, our team is currently developing short educational videos on individual billing topics. Our hope is that we can provide catered training to new and existing physicians, based on their comfort and proficiency levels.
We are launching something similar for our new providers around their Epic training. In the past, all new providers got the same Epic training demonstration from the department, and they received it before they had access to Epic. With the success of the Stars training, we are offering them a two-stepped training session after they obtain Epic access, so they can log into their version of Epic and follow along. The first step is an interactive training course, called the Internal Medicine Epic Starter Kit, where the team will walk them through setting up the tools they need as they start their clinical work with Internal Medicine, such as their e-signatures, documentation SmartPhrase speed buttons, and other helpful customizations. The second step is filling out a proficiency survey and being assigned instructional videos based on their responses. Again, we are focused on catered trainings to our individual faculty, so they truly get the information they need to work efficiently in Epic.
What is the most rewarding part of your work?
First, I love working with our physicians. I have learned so much from them and I'm always in awe of their work and their dedication to their patients. I do enjoy having that shoulder-to-shoulder connection with our faculty. Second, is working with our Clinical Affairs team. All of us-Krishna, Sinead, Shannon, Jessica, Arianna, and Torrie, we are a close-knit team and some of us have been working here in Internal Medicine together for six years. We are a bit of a unique team within the Business Office because every member manages something a little different than the other, but they are all amazing at what they do and, when they do get to collaborate with each other, they are incredibly respectful and happy to help. The way they are always lifting each other up is inspiring!
What do you love about working at Yale?
While I like the work that I do, I really do show up every day for the people I get to work with. I’m thankful for all the amazing individuals I get to interact with - our team, the physicians, and others in the business office, including past and present Lead Administrators. I have also had very strong female leadership guiding me throughout my career here at Yale and I'm very appreciative of that. I have learned so much about perseverance, grace, and determination from Terry Carty, Joyce Dupee, and Dr. Tanoue, and I don’t think I would be where I am today without having those skills or their support along the way. I am forever indebted to their kindness and mentorship.
What is your favorite pastime?
I love doing yoga! I started during the beginning of the pandemic, following along to some amazing YouTube videos. I am not very good at it, but it really helps me de-stress and brings me a lot of joy!