“My project involved researching optimal looking at questions like, ‘Is it effective to contract terms as the hospital was selecting open up a clinic in this area? What kind of an anesthesia group to work with,” Gottlich resources would we need? Are we able to said. “So I reviewed other contracts and the take care of 90,000 people in this area?’ These experiences of other hospitals, and based programs are truly significant and students on the research and metrics out there, I pre- are working on real $2-$3 million contracts.” pared a report for Dr. Kerr to use. I felt like part of the team. I felt important.” Due to popular demand, the Baylor Office of Prehealth Studies recently launched the Modeled after the CMO internships, Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio the Genesis Physicians Group Summer CMO Internship, which is structured just like Administrative Internship gives Baylor the BSWH CMO internship but currently prehealth students the opportunity to work accepts only one or two students. “inside” healthcare’s administrative infra“With the CMO internships, interns are structure. Genesis is one of North Texas’ looking at the healthcare industry itself as largest Independent Physician Associations a research concern,” Sanker said. “They’re with more than 1,385 independently
GENESIS INTERNSHIP
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practicing physicians, working in more than 600 locations across 60+ specialties in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Baylor students who intern at Genesis develop a broad understanding of the market forces that are changing the landscape of healthcare delivery and financing. Recent Baylor prehealth graduate Olumide Sokunbi (BS ‘16) said the Genesis internship was almost like the clinical rotations he began at Baylor College of Medicine in January 2017 — a kind of “administrative rotation” where learning takes place on the job and a great deal of information has to be absorbed within a short period of time. “I think it was really good for me to see the business side of medicine, to look at healthcare from a macro perspective,” Sokunbi said. “The thing I didn’t realize was how much focus is on improvement. In school, you just have an assignment, you do it, you get a grade, you move on. But in the workplace, there are so many meetings about performance and improvement.”
LOCAL OPPORTUNITIES If they want to stay closer to campus, Baylor students may apply to one of five Central Texas internship programs — in Waco at Providence Health Center, Baylor Scott & White Medical Center-Hillcrest, the Doris Miller Veteran Affairs Medical Center and the Waco Family Health Center, and in Temple at the Baylor Scott & White Medical Center. The Providence Research Associates Program (PRAP) accepts about 10 Baylor undergraduate prehealth students each year. It provides them with an early experience in clinical research, writing study protocols, consulting with healthcare professionals, entering and analyzing data and presenting their research at showcases and competitions. “This internship lasts a whole year and is clinically focused,” Sanker said. “Interns are assigned to ongoing projects and might work with a surgeon who is using a new procedure, so students are looking at the effects of this procedure, the efficacy, patient outcomes and so forth. Interns might work with cardiology in testing a new drug. It involves research on the clinical side, and students get facetime with real patients.”