July 22, 2011

This morning the fellows met with Cindy Urbancic and Travis Laird, two individuals highly involved in Cleveland Clinic's middle east operations. Cleveland Clinic is responsible for the management of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD), and teams are well underway to make sure everything is ready for the Dec 2012 opening. It's going to be a HUGE building, over 4.5 million square feet, and will be the building with the most amount of steel in the Middle East by the time it is completed...even more than the Burj Khalifa!

Some of the risks Cleveland Clinic is facing at the moment are integration, changes around healthcare financing and reimbursement in a non-US country, recruiting core members of the Cleveland Clinic team who can help in transferring CC's unique culture, supply chain issues, the HR lifecycle process, and repatriation of those who work at CCAD. There are a couple of unique opportunities to work at CCAD, however, and I hope to get the chance to work on an international project during my time here.

Why choose the Cleveland Clinic?

Often people come up to me asking, "Why did you choose the Cleveland Clinic for an administrative fellowship?" The simple answer was that I was looking for a healthcare organization that values people who like to do things differently. A place where I could be inspired to come up with solutions that could be implemented in a forward-thinking place like the Cleveland Clinic.

People throw around the word "innovation" a lot, saying that companies need to be more innovative and "think outside the box." I think that a lot of companies say they want to be innovative without giving their employees the resources to be effective. Now, I am not too familiar with the Cleveland Clinic and what they do to promote innovation, but I know it is pervasive throughout the organization as evidenced by the many medical and operational breakthroughs that I experienced while I was at the Clinic.

I really enjoyed the people I met and felt they could assist me in achieving my goal of becoming an effective healthcare administrator.

They also have clinical expertise in a wide variety of medical specialties (particularly in the cardiovascular, digestive, and urological areas).

I'm just excited to be working for a company who is one of the leaders at what they do. I'm excited to work for the best and be able to see what the best are doing in their fields.

Discussion with Nemo

I talked with Nemo today about the fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic and how to prepare. Here were the major takeaways:
1) How did you prepare for the fellowship?

• Annual reports
• Talked with Gina a bit
• Learned about the history of the Clinic
• Don't do anything