Health Department Employee Impresses UCLA

The Gulf County Health Department is benefitting from an employee's two-week trip to California.

Clarissa Herndon, the Health Department's public information officer and health educator, was chosen to attend a prestigious management school at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Not only did she cram an enormous amount of material into a limited time frame, she was invited back because of her stellar performance. And the county health department will be the ongoing recipient of that knowledge.

Herndon was selected to attend the Johnson and Johnson/UCLA Health Care Executive Program, an intensive two-week course conducted at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

The program is designed to enhance the management and leadership skills of community-based health care organization executives.

Herndon was one of a class of 40 chosen nationwide from people representing organizations that serve more than 1 million patients and clients annually at 475 sites.

Participants are selected through a competitive application process, and all expenses and materials are fully funded by the program. Eligibility is limited to organizations that are funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an operating division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"It was intense," Herndon said, describing the 14-hour days during which her class absorbed an entire semester of the UCLA Masters of Business Administration program. "Through lectures during that time, they tie their program directly to your program at your health care facility."

But how will all those hours and program integrations help the Gulf County Health Department?

The result of Herndon's UCLA studies is a project to build a tracking system that follows patients from their first call at the health department to post-billing to see how the process works, how it is efficient, and if it isn't efficient, how to fix it. And it turns Herndon into a type of efficiency expert.

"It serves our patients by improving their quality of health care," she said. "Anytime any organization grows quickly, like our health department has in the last five years, this must be done."

Herndon said since 2003, the Gulf County Health Department has grown from 12 employees in a small space on Fourth Street in Port St. Joe serving 13,000 people to its current facility on Garrison Avenue, with 81 employees who serve 40,000 people annually. The department also has added a wide variety of programs, she said.

A second initiative that will come from Herndon's UCLS studies is a project to determine just how the new Sacred Heart Hospital, scheduled to open in late 2009, will affect the Gulf County Health Department.

"Our goal with Sacred Heart is to pin down a specific working relationship with them," Herndon explained. "For instance, the health department is right now handling emergency and urgent care in the county. We would like to see that shifted to the emergency room at Sacred Heart."
Sacred Heart, in turn, would send people to the health department who are under Medicare and Medicaid and who are uninsured, she said.

"We want to establish a strong referral system with Sacred Heart so we can work as a team," Herndon said. "We currently have a memorandum of understanding with Sacred Heart to provide services to the underinsured and underserved."

With the completion of her UCLA studies, Herndon is now an operations and management consultant, in addition to her other positions.

Douglas Kent, Gulf County Health Department administrator and Herndon's supervisor, joined Herndon the final two days in Los Angeles, just in time to attend the program's last session and hear Herndon present her group's project to representatives of HRSA, representatives of Johnson and Johnson and the UCLA faculty.

Herndon received a standing ovation after delivering her presentation, and as a selected presenter, she was invited back next year for the advanced program offered by the school.

She will spend the next year working on her projects and reports for HRSA and UCLA, she said.

The UCLA Anderson School of Management established in 1935, is recognized as one of America's premier graduate business schools and is considered among the leading business schools in the world.

Johnson & Johnson is the world's most comprehensive and broadly based manufacturer of health care products.