MGMA Member Spotlight: A Conversation with Karen Bowman, ACMPE Forum Representative of the Year
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We are back with another MGMA member spotlight podcast, and I am honored to bring in our special guest today, Karen Bowman. Karen has her FACMPE, her CPC, her CPMA, her CPCOI, and Karen has been awarded the prestigious ACMPE Forum Representative of the Year Award. Karen, I want to thank you and congratulations on this award.
Karen Bowman:Oh gosh, thank you so much. It's just been unreal to receive this award, and I am so blessed to be able to be here and be, thank you for having me here.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. So do want to congratulate you again on that award. If you don't mind, first, I would love for you to share a little bit about your background. I know you were telling me offline that you are from Tennessee. You're there in that Tennessee area now, but give us a little bit about that healthcare journey that you might want to share with our MGMA listeners.
Karen Bowman:Oh, absolutely. I started in the healthcare field, gosh, over thirty something years ago. I've been a healthcare administrator for more than thirty years so it was quite a bit before that because I worked in reception and billing and different things of that nature. And as I grew in the medical field I really loved the administrative part of it. And so that got me into healthcare management and smaller practices that I led.
Karen Bowman:I knew my certified coder, I did the billing and all that kind of stuff. I don't do that anymore. I have a wonderful team that does that for our practice, but I love what I do. That's all I know, to be honest with you.
Daniel Williams:Yeah, tell us about your practice and what is the practice and size and scope, anything else you might want to share about your role there?
Karen Bowman:Sure. I work for Gastrointestinal Associates of Cleveland in Cleveland, Tennessee. We have grown since I've been here. We started, when I started back we had like four employees I think it was. Now we're up to 20.
Karen Bowman:We have six providers, two of us being physicians and four being APPs. And we would love to have another physician but it's just really hard to recruit GI physicians now and so it's been we have moved locations because of the growth that we had and we're one of two practices in my community for GI so we stay pretty busy.
Daniel Williams:Yeah what do you see as your role there?
Karen Bowman:I'm the administrator. I am the leader of practice and you know it's the team. It's the team that we have and what I tell my staff all the time we're a big circle and even if it's one of us is out doesn't matter who it is we all have to fill in and make sure that we can get our patients taken care of because that's why we have jobs.
Daniel Williams:We're going to talk a lot about you being the ACMPE Forum representative of the year. First, we were talking offline, though, and I want to switch gears here because this is so neat. You've got a child who's a freshman at the University of Tennessee and is not only a freshman there but is in their marching band, 400 plus strong. Congratulations. Tell us about what it's like to be a a parent of somebody in in that incredible marching band there.
Karen Bowman:Awesome. It is awesome. It is my grandson.
Daniel Williams:Oh, your grandson. Okay,
Karen Bowman:my grandson. His name is Cameron and he was in our local band in the middle school and the high school. He plays tenor sax and he's just fabulous. Of course I'm the grandmother I can say that. And he joined UT.
Karen Bowman:He actually is it's all scholarship. There's nothing that we have to face. He said very well it's all under a scholarship he's attending there. And so he plays in the band and they kind of rock it, you know, I love it. Go Vols.
Daniel Williams:There's two things
Karen Bowman:from us that we can go watch in March and watch the football players and things, so.
Daniel Williams:That is so wonderful. Some of the MGMA listeners have heard me talk about my daughter. She is now a junior in college, but she's been a cheerleader the last couple of years at San Diego State. I know what it's like to have child or a grandchild, you know, that you see them out on that field and you kind of are in your own way. You're out there with them.
Daniel Williams:So it's just such a neat experience for you, and I'm just congratulating you and the entire family. That is just a really neat thing to get to experience.
Karen Bowman:Thank you and congratulations to you too. And you know you get teary eyed when you watch them because that's your grandson or your baby, if you will, out there.
Daniel Williams:Yeah.
Karen Bowman:No matter he's six foot five, but no matter how little or big they are, you know, they're yours and you just want the best for them and it it just, you know, your heart swells with pride to watch them do something that they love doing and so, we'll see what he ends up doing with his life. You know, there's no telling.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Well, is that's a wonderful story, and I'm I'm so glad that you just shared that with us. So we do wanna get here and talk about you being the ACMPE Forum representative of the year. First of all, just tell us what a a forum representative is through the MGMA program. Some of our listeners may be interested to get involved as well, so tell us about that.
Karen Bowman:Oh of course and you know we're always needing ACMP reform reps in the state. Sometimes we don't have all those positions filled. We assist our members by helping them and giving them the tools that they need to either pursue certification and or fellowship or to get that certificate that they want you know to better themselves. I'm a past president since CMGMA so I've been through and seen several different things over my career and I will tell you one of the main things that happened to me is I have two good friends years ago Kathy White was a former rep for Tennessee and she asked me to be on her ACMPE committee with Tennessee and I did that and then Miss Debbie Hudson which a lot of people know Debbie. Debbie is a good friend of mine, a really good friend of mine and Debbie was the former rep of Tennessee and she's the past president of Tennessee.
Karen Bowman:She's done so many things but she asked me to be on her committee so it kind of lit a fire for passion in me because I love ACMPE. I love what it's done for me in my career by becoming certified and becoming a fellow and I want to help other people to achieve that. You know as foreign reps we work closely with MGMA and the ACMPE team there and also with our states and trying to help our members get the tools that they need to become certified and or download.
Daniel Williams:Now, us about when you learned that you had won the ACMPE Forum representative of the year award. What went through your mind? What happened there? What was that like?
Karen Bowman:Oh my gosh. A friend of mine too is Tracy Byrd who got the very first ACMPE former rep of the year and I could not have been more happy for her because she is ACMPE and so I had no idea that I was nominated and when I got that email to tell me that I had won I was just ecstatic and just so very humbled and blessed to be nominated for this. And it just kind of comes full circle for me, you know the hard work that you put into it. Not really for an award but just to help people. So you know it just comes full circle that I did get that award and I feel very honored to be the recipient this year.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Now part of what you've done there, you've really given back. You have led multiple prep courses, mock exams. You've done all kinds of things, giving back, helping mentor and train other ACMPE students. What has that meant to you?
Daniel Williams:What did you get involved with that side of it for in the first place, and how has it rewarded you as well?
Karen Bowman:Oh, that's very interesting you asked that because many years ago when I was president of the Cleveland Local Chapter MGMA, I decided to do scholarships and we did five scholarships for individuals who wanted to pursue certification. And so I held several, I think it was two different times I held them in my office study groups but we had some people that came in virtually to it and so that was the first experience that I had for study group. And so then it proceeded on when I became a former rep. That's something I felt that I should offer to our state members and then it just proceeded to go different ways. Know we offered it up to multiple states and for the last two years we've done and Tracy and I did last year and then this year we opened it up with Deb Hudson, Deb Bartell and Beth Kastens and so we all have done the study group this year.
Karen Bowman:We've done two of those so far and it's worked out really really good to open it up to all the states so if anybody wants to look at it and we do it's an eight week course and so we just meet at lunch every Tuesday for eight weeks and you know we give them the material review the body of knowledge with everybody and I think it's just getting the information in their hands and giving them the ability to ask questions. I think that's where it's been successful and we have had so many attendees you know we've had at least 100 people sign up each time and a lot of times we'll have 60 or 70 people on that Zoom meeting which is amazing you know because everybody has their own lives and their busy lives working so they're not always able to attend but we give them the information we send them continuing education credit and the PowerPoint presentation so they'll have it and all the other little information that goes along with it. And this year we sent them the virtual, I think it was electronic copy of the flashcards that we did for a few years.
Karen Bowman:So we sent those out to everybody too. Anything that we could do to help them study, that's what we did.
Daniel Williams:Right. Now I was reading about that. You just reiterated it that you might have 70 people, sometimes even nearly 100 participants in these work groups, these study groups. How do you keep people engaged? What's the methodology there?
Daniel Williams:If you've got that many people in a Zoom room, how are you keeping them all engaged, interactive? What does that look like?
Karen Bowman:Well, you know, we give them a chance to put questions in the chat, communicate. We'll interact with them, say, hey. Tell me how it goes in in your practice. What do you see? And I think that's what it does is they get interactive.
Karen Bowman:I'm a person you can tell me something a hundred times but until I do it I don't really grasp
Daniel Williams:it. So
Karen Bowman:it's given them that chance to ask us questions and then I'm kind of the point of contact for those individuals because I send out all the materials to them so they will send back to me certain questions and I'll try to help them with that because if it's if they're new to this it can be a little bit difficult and one of the things we have to remember is you know as a whole with ACMP it covers all those domains that we have but not everybody has those particular duties in their offices and their practices that they work in. So they need to you know look at those, learn those body of knowledge, materials, and everything. So that's kind of what we do. It's a team effort.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. I love that. Well, is so neat. Do you do y'all put fun into it ever? Do y'all do, like, any kind of fun games, trivia, anything else that just kinda gets people going there?
Daniel Williams:No. Are they too serious for them?
Karen Bowman:Hey, guys. That's a great idea for next time we can do that. We do have questions, you know, some kinda quiz at the end. And you know we tell stories. We allow them to tell a story about what's going on in their lives.
Karen Bowman:We share stories about something that maybe were discussed and how it affected ourselves and you know what you do to handle those. You know just kind of real life experiences for them. Because like I said not everybody deals with everything. You may have an HR consultant in your practice and you don't deal with HR. So you're not familiar with that or risk and compliance.
Karen Bowman:So it's kind of teaching them things that they don't know and so yeah, we try to make it fun. We laugh and we cut up and everything, and we involve them. I think that's the main thing.
Daniel Williams:Now, in reading about you, I see that you also serve on the ACMPE Certification Commission as the forum rep liaison. Tell us about that. What does that role entail? What do you do there?
Karen Bowman:Well, first of all, it's an honor to be on that Certification Commission and it's a great group of people. We're all like minded and and we all think a lot, but we often think differently because we're from different areas of The United States and we all have different practices and things that we do. As far as the form rep liaison, I'm the connection if you will, the conduit between the commission and the form reps. And so we hold quarterly meetings which I you know I lead those meetings and it's there I'm always there for a point of contact especially for the new form reps. I have phone calls with those new form reps sometimes and just kind of go over what it it entails to be a form rep.
Karen Bowman:But as far as being on the commission you know we look at things, we look at our members and we try to do things that our members need that are important to our members. We have students. We have you know large organizational membership. We have small practices. I'm from a small practice.
Karen Bowman:So we have to keep in mind that everybody that we're kind of trying to you know look at for this, for the Commission. And we try to look at the exams and the growth and what we need to do to make it better for everybody. I think we've done a very good job at it. You know we discuss things. We have a monthly meeting that we discuss, know review items and so it works out really good.
Daniel Williams:What's been the most rewarding part of being someone who supports individuals through that ACMPE certification process?
Karen Bowman:I think when you are contacted by them and they send something to you saying I passed that exam, I got my fellowship because you hear in their voices you know the excitement and that they have accomplished so much. I think that's what it is and I get excited every month as a program rep when I get those oh gosh what's it called the advancement reports and because I can see people from all the states so some of those names I recognize from our study group and so it also makes me happy to know that they are you know they're helping themselves they're pursuing certification for a reason and what I've always said is you know our physicians are board certified and that's in their field this is their field so it would be great for us to be board certified and a fellow and for me that is the best thing I've ever done in my career to be honest with you. I became certified in 02/2008 and a fellow in 2010 and if you didn't do your fellowship the first time they didn't accept your stuff or whatever it was don't give up you know don't give up because you're gonna get this and even passing the certification exams you're gonna get this sometimes we don't always pass on the first try but just keep on keeping on and you know you know the stuff it's just applying it to those exams and then you know review out of your you know your paper and everything like that but I can tell you that this it just means a lot to me and it means a lot when you see those individuals there's a lot for Tennessee too.
Karen Bowman:Think last year we had so many fellows I can't remember but what I do as a form rep is I keep a spreadsheet so last year was the Tennessee MGMA's fiftieth anniversary so I had a goal of 50 individuals moving through the college whether it become an applicant or used to be a nominee and so forth and we had more than 50 in Tennessee. I was so very proud of that. We had more fellows last year than we ever had, so it was their hard work doing it and me just kind of staying there being their cheerleader the whole time.
Daniel Williams:You were talking about people needed to have that resilience. If you do hit some roadblocks, stay strong, get through In addition to that, what other advice would you give people who are going through that ACMPE exam process? Just so they can pass the exam and get through that, what is the best advice as they're preparing and going through it?
Karen Bowman:One of the things I can share with you is it's not about you and your practice. It's about the best answers overall. And what we do in our practices may not be the best answer. You know we all do things a little differently but don't give up. Find something if you feel like you're not as great in financial management then look at the body of knowledge domain on that.
Karen Bowman:Read that book. There's a lot of free things on ACMP once you become an applicant that are available to you. You know look at those things and you know if you want to buy the exam workbook or something like that you know do that and I think don't give up just don't give up and if you have questions if you're doing it on your own, that's great. I've had people ask me, I don't think I'm going to study, I'm just going to take the exam. Well that's up to you.
Karen Bowman:If you feel like you're ready to take the exam, go right ahead. But I think for me to tell somebody is to just look to see where your strong points are, and if you have something that you're not as knowledgeable on, study that domain. That's what I would say.
Daniel Williams:Love that. Final question then. Looking ahead, kind of projecting out, what are some of the goals you have for the ACMPE Forum and for the role of ACMPE representatives?
Karen Bowman:I just think that we need to make sure that we're there for our members, number one. We are in that role for a reason. It's not just a name, you know, it does entail some work and just be there for them. I think that's what they need because it can be confusing to people that have never been involved in it and what I do is as a form rep if I don't know the answer to something which I have a member may give me a question I forward it on to Nikki at ACME and she usually answers them and copies me on that. It will make you feel better about yourself honestly because we know we know our jobs but when we get that certification in our fellowship it gives us more confidence to do our jobs and to step out and to be in that local chapter you know board if you will or the state board and even apply to do something you know at national and MGMA many years ago I was a state liaison with MGMA and so you know it's just either giving back it's how I like to say it I have a dear friend who says paying it forward so it's whichever way that you wanna look at it, to be honest with you.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Well, Karen Bowman, thank you for all the work you do with MGMA, and congratulations for being the ACMPE Forum Representative of the Year. Thank you.
Karen Bowman:Oh, thank you, Daniel. It's been so nice talking to you today, and I appreciate it very much.
Daniel Williams:All right. Well, that is going to do it for this episode of the MGMA Member Spotlight Podcast. Thanks again to Karen Bowman for joining us today. Congratulations to her for receiving this award. We're gonna put in the episode show notes several links in there where you can learn more about being a forum rep, about ACMPE, and lots of other things related to MGMA.
Daniel Williams:Until then, thank you all for being MGMA podcast listeners.
