MGMA Member Spotlight: Linda Carroll on MGMA's Resource Group for AAPI Healthcare Leaders
Download MP3Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We're really excited about a new series we're starting. You may not be aware of this, but MGMA has launched some MGMA Resource Groups. And these Resource Groups are inclusive spaces where members can come together, share experiences, lift each other up, solve problems, all of these things and today, we have Linda Carroll who is a CMPE and Linda has more than twenty years of experience as a medical manager with a background in orthopedic surgery and maternal fetal medicine.
Daniel Williams:She is also one of the dedicated facilitators of the AAPI Healthcare Leaders Resource Group here at MGMA. Linda, welcome to the podcast.
Linda Carroll:Hi, thank you. Good morning.
Daniel Williams:Good morning. So you and I were talking offline before we got started and you shared with me, and I didn't realize this until we were connecting earlier this week, but you're in Alaska, right?
Linda Carroll:Yes.
Daniel Williams:Wow. That's so neat. You know, I'm in Colorado. That's where a lot of the MGMA employees are. Most of us are here in the Denver area and I'm from the South originally.
Daniel Williams:So, I complain a lot when it's winter time but then I saw you were from Alaska. What what is winter like in Alaska? What's that like?
Linda Carroll:Well, I'm in Anchorage. So, we're, you know, we're coastal so it's it's not as it doesn't get as cold as it does in what we call the interior of the state. But definitely it's cold and dark. And when I say dark, in Anchorage will get probably about six to eight hours of daylight and really like around 3PM, it starts to get dusky kind of at the height of winter for us, which is around December. I know winter solstice isn't until like December, but for us, we really consider our winter season starts kind of at the October, like Halloween.
Linda Carroll:So by the time, like winter solstice comes, we have been pretty pretty swamped in our our winter season per se. But, yeah. So, you know, it's basically getting up in the dark and going to work in the dark and then coming home in the dark. So, those that are lucky enough to have windows, we get a little bit of daylight between ten and two in the height of winter and then, yeah. So.
Daniel Williams:That is incredible. Well, thank you so much for that and it's just so good to have you here today. So, we are going to talk about these resource groups. So, before we do that, let's just kick off something here. Tell us a little bit about your background in health care.
Daniel Williams:How did you did you pick healthcare as a profession? Anything you wanna share about that?
Linda Carroll:Sure. So while I was in college, I got a job at a physician's office. It was a hand surgeon here in Anchorage and it was for front desk. The schedule worked very easily with my school schedule. And I actually found, that was my first foray into medical.
Linda Carroll:I found that I really liked it. And one of the gals I worked very closely with, she did the billing and the coding. And so I was talking with her about that. And the office just encouraged me if I was interested to explore getting credentialed. AAPC, American Academy of Professional Coders, was something new at that time because that was very, very long time ago that, you know, it was like the late nineties when I was getting into this.
Linda Carroll:And so, yeah, they were a fairly new group, but they had some good information. The one gal that I worked closely with who I did a lot of mentoring with, she actually had her CPC certification. And again, just through a lot of support after I was done with school, I was still working there. They encouraged me to do that. So I did that.
Linda Carroll:And I was getting a degree. I was a business major for business administration and I knew I was enjoying healthcare. I did not want to be on the hands on clinical side. So it just made sense with my educational background and what I found interesting on the administrative side was to stay in admin. And so, yeah, and that's how I got my first taste of you know, medical manager life.
Linda Carroll:I got my coding certification and yeah, so then I just went on from there. So, I feel very lucky for me here in Anchorage. The medical community is pretty strong. It it's small and close knit but definitely, I have worked with some wonderful surgeons over the years and then the opportunity to switch to something totally different, maternal fetal medicine with my longtime friend who is also the physician. Was coming back to Alaska and said, let's do something for ourselves.
Linda Carroll:And so seven years later, here we are at our practice.
Daniel Williams:Wow, that is so cool. So tell us a little bit about that practice then as I was talking to you earlier about Alaska. It just seems foreign to me because I've never been there. I've read a couple of books that at least touch on Alaska a little bit into the wild. Not not a happy ending there with Into the Wild if you've read that by John Krakauer but love the book and so tell us about what a little bit about what health care is like in Anchorage and particularly in your practice.
Linda Carroll:Certainly. So definitely a few other states are like Alaska and that it's it's very rural. Okay. A lot of things are spread out. And so Anchorage really serves as you know, it's the biggest city.
Linda Carroll:It's the main hub and any of our advanced medical stuff that we have here in Alaska is all based out of Anchorage. Okay. Know, Alaska certainly for a long time has been somewhat in its own little bubble in terms of things that would affect or that we saw happening administratively insurance, you know, health insurance wise that are happening in what Alaskans refer to as the Lower 48 are really not affecting us here in Alaska, not for a very long time. And so I mean, certainly now we are starting to feel and see some of those same effects. But again, we've just I think being in Alaska practicing medicine here, it really requires physicians to, you know, kind of be kind of thinking outside of the box and how you're going to get care to your patients, for your patients.
Linda Carroll:They really have to be innovative in what we're doing. Even ten years ago, kind of when people were talking about like telehealth and being able to provide services that way, Part of the thing is, here in Alaska, we had a conference with one of our local state representatives and it wasn't so much that the physicians here, because not a lot of physicians here were doing that. They weren't really embracing that. And it's not because they didn't want to be involved in that kind of technology. It's just that that technology in these outlying areas, I mean, they still had dial up Internet.
Linda Carroll:They did not, we didn't have the satellites that we do now. We don't have, There was no Starlink and getting any sort of like Internet, especially some sort of video capability was very, very difficult, even at the smaller facilities that were in these outlying locations. And so, again, that's where the challenge comes in, right? So then how do you get this care to individuals without making the individual have to travel half a day to come to Anchorage. And so we definitely in Alaska, I think probably make more use of med flights than some other states just because of the necessity of getting someone who lives in a village of 200 people with very limited resources, getting them to the care that they need requires a little bit more.
Linda Carroll:So and I think that's yeah, that also is what I think helps make the medical community here so close knit because the few specialists that we have in the state, it really takes them communicating and working together when they're working on getting someone from a rural site to Anchorage and making sure that then we have all of the care that they need kind of lined up or who they need to see basically ready to go knowing that patient Linda is coming in on this med flight and these are the services that she will need.
Daniel Williams:That is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that because it really paints a picture of what you're experiencing there, what those physician patient relationships are like, and that greater healthcare community. Because you said it may be a little bit smaller. It's very close knit. Many of you know each other.
Daniel Williams:So you really rely on each other. It becomes a true network. Thank you for painting that picture. That's really cool.
Linda Carroll:Absolutely.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. We may do a whole podcast on just Alaskan health care. I had so many thoughts when you said, well, we're the lower 48 here. Is Hawaii just Hawaii? Are they that state that's out there in the Pacific?
Daniel Williams:How do you refer to them?
Linda Carroll:Yeah, Hawaiians are is Alaska's vacation hotspot.
Daniel Williams:There you go. Hey, mine too. Mine too. So, let's talk about something that is so top of mind right now. About a year or so ago, everybody, if you're not aware of these, MGMA launched Leaders Resource Groups.
Daniel Williams:We have several in our episode show notes of this episode. I'm gonna provide additional information and a direct link so you can just click on those and see if there are any resource groups groups you're interested in and in this series of discussing the resource groups, I'm going to have facilitators from each one of those to come on and that's what Linda's doing here to explain a little bit about what they're experiencing in them. So, let's just start there. Linda, the AAPI Healthcare Leaders Resource Group is the one where you're one of the facilitators. Tell us a little bit about this group.
Daniel Williams:Just wherever you want to start at the beginning or how your involvement began. What do you wanna share about this resource group initially for us?
Linda Carroll:Sure. Well, I saw the launch and that MGMA was creating these resource groups, which I thought was great. And then of course, know, I signed up to join a couple different ones. AAPI being one of them just because of my my demographic. And so yeah, then when the leaders conference was approaching, you know, they put a call out for volunteers, individuals that were interested in co hosting the first AAPI or the well, any of the resource group breakouts that they were having at leaders conference in October, last October.
Linda Carroll:And I thought this was just a great way to volunteer, be involved. So I had signed up to do that. I think it's great. One of the first things for us, our group, when we met, it was a very small group, I think, compared to maybe some of the other different resource groups that we're meeting. But one of the things that really hit us in terms of having the safe space, people with similar backgrounds and things where we could connect.
Linda Carroll:You know, we talked about, at least for AAPI, it was, you know, we see a lot of people that fall into that or classify themselves as part of that demographic more on the hands on clinical side. And we didn't see a lot on the business administrative side and the management side. So it was really great to get together with a group of individuals and talk about some of our shared experiences, how some of our experiences were different based on whether we were working in private practices, working for institutions, whether they were educational institutions or hospitals, groups, and based on where we were located. I again, being here in Alaska at that meeting, it
Daniel Williams:was
Linda Carroll:great. I met an individual from Hawaii And I know that Hawaii used to have an MGMA chapter and made up of a group of islands. It was very difficult, I know, for them to meet and get together. I felt honored that I think at one of their last state MGMA meetings that they had, I got to fly in on behalf of MGMA as a liaison and kind of talk about some of the things that were happening. So yeah, it was just, it was really great to meet individuals just from across The US and see where we were at.
Linda Carroll:And to know that, again, despite what types of institutions we were working with, what our background particularly was in medicine. There were a handful of very similar shared experiences.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Tell us a little bit about, just a sentence or so about your co facilitator, and then what's the kind of space you're trying to create for anyone who would join in and discuss healthcare, AAPI, anything else in those discussions? What does that look like?
Linda Carroll:My co facilitator, Deepa, she's amazing. And again, she works. I think it's great because again, we have different backgrounds in terms of how we're working in medicine. She's working at a large institution, whereas I'm in a small private practice. So I think that's great.
Linda Carroll:Bring different perspectives even though we have again some similarities. The space that we are creating is definitely we talked about this, one of belonging safety amongst our peers to be open and honest and have conversations and a place where we truly understand some of the challenges and issues that are specific to AAPI, how we have dealt with them, offering support to our peers if they're experiencing something similar and kind of being able to coach and mentor them through that.
Daniel Williams:Okay, that that's wonderful. Yeah, that's where I I was wondering how much you just get into a meeting and then it's just, can you believe patient access or billing or coding? Or if you do include some time for what it's like to be an AAPI healthcare leader and then really getting to the cultural conversation as well. Yeah.
Linda Carroll:Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We had a good at at the leaders conference. We in one of our sessions, we had a very interesting conversation based on like cultural background and being in management and just kind of what some of the perceptions of course are of individuals with our background and how we work and such.
Linda Carroll:So yeah, it was a really good conversation again to have with individuals that, you know, again, just have the same shared experiences can easily relate and, you know, have that open, honest, safe conversation.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. And it's so interesting because you led, we didn't, I didn't have any idea you were going to go there by being in Alaska. That's a close knit community but it seems like you've expanded that to this AAPI resource group where this is a close knit community where y'all can really have some shared experiences and where things are maybe different depending on where you are in the country or anything of that nature. Was that anything that was designed by you and your co facilitator or something that just came about organically?
Linda Carroll:I definitely think it's something that came about organically as we opened up the conversation and we're talking with individuals. It's just something that naturally developed and conversation just naturally flowed to that topic.
Daniel Williams:Okay. And then as far as the patient population, are there any of the members of the resource group where they may be in a heavier AAPI patient population and where there is an opportunity to gain trust, communicate, understand the backgrounds culturally with those patients as well.
Linda Carroll:Absolutely, I mean, here in Alaska in Anchorage, we do have a high Asian population. Some of the other individuals that we met, you know, like the individual from Hawaii, the there were a couple from California, San Francisco area. So definitely areas with demographics that we certainly could relate to. And we talked about really how, and I think this happens across any demographic, right? If you're someone who also relates to that, understands that, it does make it a little bit easier, I think, to interact with those patients to when they come in and if they see someone who they feel looks like them, they feel a little bit more at ease, that more comfortable.
Linda Carroll:And I think especially for some of us, when we talked about one of the practices I was at previously, we had a lot of elderly Asian patients. And just again, from my experience, working with my mom and having grown up with her and being able to understand some of the cultural nuances, Connecting with those individuals, I think, was a little easier for me. Helping staff understand some of their behaviors or the way that they were speaking was a cultural thing for them. It wasn't something that was intended to be unkind or that they didn't understand what was being asked or said to them. Was just it was a cultural thing.
Linda Carroll:And kind of being able to bridge that gap in between for the patients and the rest of the staff. Again, I think that really always when a patient feels like they have somebody else there that really can empathize with them, I think it helps overall just with their comfort level of being at whatever office they're at.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. Hearing you talk and when you brought up your mom and your eyes kind of lit up a little bit talking about your mom, it really reminded me at MGMA, we have a book club and we had that book Crying in H Mart that we read. I don't know if you've heard. Have you read that or heard about?
Linda Carroll:Oh, yes. Yeah.
Daniel Williams:Yeah and it just started thinking about that because there's this incredible, beautiful, and complicated relationship between the author and her mom and it's really, wow, it's just giving me kind of goosebumps talking about it but so you have read that and it it gave us all a glimpse inside at least a little bit about what it's like being a Korean American and you know, that transition and what that's like. And so anything you wanna share about it might have been a minute since you read the book, but you have read it though.
Linda Carroll:I have read it. Yes. So the the author, Michelle, so she is actually in a band that I.
Daniel Williams:Yeah, she is.
Linda Carroll:And so I was already familiar with her and the band. I've seen them live. It's been great. And then I saw that she wrote this book and talking about her relationship with her mom and everything. And so as soon as it came out, yeah, I immediately was like, I'm getting this book.
Linda Carroll:So yeah, it's been a while since I read it. Like, you know, I read it when it first came out, but, and for me, of course, it's something that really, resonated with me. I could really connect with it and yeah.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. And the one other thing, everybody, if you haven't read the book, there's a real connection to Korean food in there as well, her love for that food, or sometimes not, you know, but just her she's a foodie and really talks about the preparation and how that was passed down. I believe it's been a minute since I read it, but I think one of her mom's sisters, one of the author's aunts, really has a connection to that food as well. So it's a great read and I'm going to put something in the episode show notes. So in the remaining time, you have another resource group coming up.
Daniel Williams:Let me get this right, everybody. It's Tuesday, July 15 at 12PM Eastern Time. You can find more details and register at mgma.comevents but Linda, when you you know you've got this coming up, you and your co facilitator, July 15, do y'all set together certain themes or topics you want to address? What can people expect? If anybody's going to hear this and join that, what can they expect for this particular resource group meeting?
Linda Carroll:For this particular meeting, we're breaking down communication and not just with staff. We talked about really how you have to tailor your conversation to your audience, right? So I could say the same thing that if I wanna talk about patient relationships, how I talk to physicians about that is different than how I talk to staff about that. And so we're breaking that down and we're gonna cover different topics. Like for instance, I will talk about the conversations and how you tailor your conversations to your physicians and working with.
Linda Carroll:My facilitator, she is going to be talking about then how you have that same conversation and really what it sounds like and how you change it to have speak with your staff members in regards to that. So I think it's going to be really great. We're super excited. We're looking forward to being able to offer some additional support for anybody that wants to come and join the group.
Daniel Williams:That is wonderful. So last thing then, how often do the resource groups meet your particular one?
Linda Carroll:We were trying to meet on a quarterly basis at the minimum. So we're going to be meeting quarterly. If we have enough interest, I think Deepa and I had talked about maybe perhaps being able to do it like every other month versus quarterly.
Daniel Williams:Okay. Okay. Well, Linda Carroll, it has been such an honor and just so cool to get to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us.
Linda Carroll:Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. This has been wonderful.
Daniel Williams:Yeah. So everybody, I'm gonna give you this information again. The next AAPI Healthcare Leaders Resource Group meeting, again, it's Tuesday, July 15, 12PM Eastern. You can find all the details and information on registering at mgma.com/events. You'll find it there but I'll also put that information in our episode show notes.
Daniel Williams:We also, Linda, I'm not sure if I told you this, but we turn this conversation into an article that lives on the MGMA website as well. So, we'll have, all kinds of great information in there. Maybe we'll even talk food and crying in H Mart, all kinds of things. We're going to we really want to shine a light on here and bring that awareness to these resource groups. So, again, Linda, thank you so much for joining.
Linda Carroll:Thank you.
Daniel Williams:Great to have you here. And, everybody, look for that, those episode show notes as well, and you can just click right through and register for this. So until then, thank you all for being MGMA podcast listeners.
