Chapter 06 : A New Role as CEO of the Proton Therapy Center; Lessons in Effective Leadership

Chapter 06 : A New Role as CEO of the Proton Therapy Center; Lessons in Effective Leadership

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Description

Ms. Hay talks her work after 2005, when she asked to leave MD Anderson to take a role as CEO of the Proton Therapy Center. She talks about the change in role and environment, where she had to bring a new focus to finances in addition to clinical care.

She explains Dr. Cox’s approach of developing a clientele for the Proton Therapy Center. She talks about the lessons she learned through this process, notably the importance of accountability. She talks about how effective leadership finds ways of engaging clinicians in ways that are meaningful to them.

Ms. Hay then explains that the Proton Therapy Center offers an excellent example of multi-disciplinary care that breaks down barriers between disciplines and institutions. She emphasizes that this approach is crucial to MD Anderson’s future and will help the institution “leverage everything we do.”

Identifier

HayAC_01_20150204_C06

Publication Date

2-4-2015

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Professional Path; Professional Path; The Administrator; Institutional Processes; The Business of MD Anderson; Building/Transforming the Institution; Leadership; On Leadership; This is MD Anderson; MD Anderson Culture; Entrepreneur, Biotechnology

Transcript

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay, so we had the recorder off for just a couple of minutes to strategize about what to do next. And so said it made sense to go back to proton therapy a little bit, to talk about your role with that.

Amy Carpenter Hay:

Yes.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay.

Amy Carpenter Hay:

I think it does. So as the satellites are building in the background, and we’ve got that up and running, I started focusing on let’s get the Proton Therapy Center out of the ground. And as part of the that, there was a lot of focus on the construction of the center, and the specifications of the equipment. I started going to Japan about every other month and spending quite a bit of time there working with the physics staff. And we literally had to write the specifications for that center from scratch. We hired Dr. Al Smith, who was a leader in protons, physics, to help us. But it was the case in which we were really writing the specifications for the future of protons. So had this incredible opportunity to listen and be part of that. It also made me realize that dedication, in order for the Proton Center to meet a three-year timeline, was going to be required. It took not only day-to-day, but twenty-four-hour-a-day management of the center, development—out internal group that was going to support it and, quite frankly, the Hitachi group in Japan. So just the coordination alone required the level of commitment. At the time, the Proton Therapy Center management asked me to leave Anderson for a role there as the chief executive officer of the Proton Therapy Center group.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

And this was 2005 to 2007?

Amy Carpenter Hay:

That’s correct. Great opportunity for me, personally, for a lot of reasons. One, I had never left Anderson. And while it was down the street and had a lot of belts and suspenders in that it was connected back in, and I got to see Dr. Cox every day—I was just being paid by somebody else—it was a completely different environment. I reported into a board, and I had a fiduciary responsibility. So while I had lived within MD Anderson, and a very comfortable approach of always thinking about the patients first, and really not considering, often, some of the financial ramifications, it forced me into an environment in which I had to address hedge-fund guys, and I had to explain to them the financials, and I had to make commitments, and I had to make sure that we met them or exceeded them. So, it was a great opportunity to learn how to balance that—to put protons and the clinical side first but balance it with the business component. And I think that is also something that I’ve been able to bring back into Anderson. You know, with Dr. Mendelsohn bringing on people such as Leon Leach, we were starting to cultivate a new environment internally. We were starting to bring in outsiders—even outsiders to healthcare like Leon Leach, like Dan Fontaine—who had experience in other environments, so could bring that to healthcare, not dismissing our mission and our focus, but supporting it. So, how do we deliver the best patient care—state-of-the-art patient care—and also ensure that we are sustainable? That we can pay for our research and our clinicians and ensure that our future makes that possible. So, it was a great—

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, and it’s—and it’s not just sustaining, it’s growing amazingly—

Amy Carpenter Hay:

Yeah.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

—at the same time.

Amy Carpenter Hay:

It is. It is. So, that two years, when I worked at the Proton Therapy Center, I was able to get it up and operational. Obviously, I spent a lot of time with Dr. Cox and some unbelievably wonderful clinicians. You know, one of the approaches Dr. Cox took, which was really impressive, was even before we started the Proton Therapy Center, he and I went by disease site in Radiation Oncology, and formed teams of doctors to start talking about protons, to review any literature out there to make libraries of the proton literature on an international basis. What’s going on out there? What are people doing? What are the results showing? What are the outcomes? And really getting the institution prepared to have protons. So, the approach we took really helped it being adopted within MD Anderson. So, after about two years, the center was up and running. It was still maturing, but it was working well. You know, clinicians were seeing patients. We were starting to see great outcomes. The volumes were increasing steadily. So, at that time, not surprisingly for my personality I’m afraid, I start to get a little bit—a little bored. It was becoming operations, which is fantastic. But I was looking for the next thing.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Before I move on to that, though, I’m wondering if you can kind of tell me what—I mean, that was a brand-new experience for you. How do you feel those two years in that slightly different role changed how you work?

Amy Carpenter Hay:

I think the first would be finding a mechanism to have business support the clinical agenda. Being creative, whether it’s being created and creating, you know, new debt structures, refinancing, but finding other opportunities to promote the clinical agenda. I think that’s very important. So that’s probably the first one. The second one likely sculpted a lot of my business development, and that—it is being accountable. There’s nothing quite like being 100 percent accountable to a board. Whether it’s in your control or not, it matters little. And accountability is something that I think I was not as attuned with until I had that experience. And it’s something that I very much believe in now. It’s something that I try to mentor my team on—it’s accountability. And we’re gonna call it accountability.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What does—what does that mean? I mean, what impact does accountability have on culture or performance?

Amy Carpenter Hay:

I—quite frankly, I think it is one of the drivers of the culture. And, you know, quite frankly, if you’re not accountable, then your performance oftentimes is not at what it should be. We should all be accountable for our job, how we behave, the goals that we set for ourselves. And I think that’s an important point at MD Anderson. You know, we’ve—we are this unbelievable machine with all of these resources. And it’s almost magical, the convergence of scientists and doctors and staff. But we are going to have to be accountable. And with the changes in healthcare reimbursement, the dynamics of consolidations in the market, and the delineation of narrow networks, we as MD Anderson are going to have to change with the healthcare world. We’re going to have to be accountable. And for me, personally, protons was the first time that that became important me on a day-to-day basis. I was accountable, which meant that if our volumes were down, it was my job to go visit with doctors and talk to them, and find out if there were issues, or if we could approach something differently. Accountability, in my opinion, is key to the future success of MD Anderson, in allowing us to be sustainable and continue to drive the research agenda.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Were there other lessons learned? Those were the big ones?

Amy Carpenter Hay:

I think those were the large ones. I think the other—you know, the thing that I continually remind myself, but that was probably the first taste, is it is very important for—to engage clinicians in a fashion that’s meaningful to them. Meaning a lot of clinician’s value raw data. It’s data. It has to be data driven. It cannot be perception driven. So, I’ve utilized that, over my career here, as a tool. Because everyone has perceptions. But having the data support your position is very important. And that’s something, again, that I think the culture with bringing in people during Mendelsohn’s era, and even more so now with Dr. DePinho, has shifted. It is—it needs to be metrics-based. We have to have definable goals. And we have to be able to show the data. And if we can’t, then we’ve got to pause and make sure that we’re going in the right direction. I think the—and if I was gonna add one more, it would be one that’s come full-circle to me in my business-development role, which is we have to break down traditional silos in medicine and healthcare in order to be successful. And a good example of that in this is that protons, while a modality of care in radiation, has to combine with surgery and medical oncology and everything else. And just providing protons is not enough. You need to engage the medical oncologists and the surgeons, and you have to have them on-board, because in a multidisciplinary-approach environment, it really is a team—a team of physicians that is prospectively looking at these cases. So if you hold protons in a small environment, maybe kind of in a silo of radiation oncology, I think we’re missing its full intent. So, educating, pulling in, engaging physicians outside a single modality is extremely important. And, quite frankly, crucial to the success of the program. And I’ve seen that time and time again, even in our regional centers and a lot of things we’re doing on the national side, engaging across the entire institution really helps support and mature our programs. When we allow ourselves to stay in a specific silo, it really does hamper our success. And, quite frankly, we no longer have the ability to do that. We have to start looking across and leveraging our programs. And we can obviously get into that more when we talk about the network. But it’s just a crucial element to our future, is how do we leverage everything we’re doing? How do protons or the satellites link in with the Moon Shots? And how does Marketing support that? And is there an angle for Development? Oh, and by the way, how can we use that to help LBJ [Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital Oncology Service] and the patients we treat over there? So, really thinking in a very large vision to connect everything institutionally is really—I think, for me personally, came from working in protons.

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Chapter 06 : A New Role as CEO of the Proton Therapy Center; Lessons in Effective Leadership

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