A curious thing happened when Denise Hooks-Anderson, MD, applied for a staff physician position at Penn Family Medicine University City. She was told her CV suggested she would be a good candidate for the practice’s soon-to-be-open lead physician position.
This was not an anomaly, says Joseph Teel, MD. Since he was appointed Chief of Regional Primary Care for Penn Medicine earlier this year, Dr. Teel has fostered a professional growth mindset, aligning qualified physicians with new, and often unexpected, roles.
“I think sometimes you just have to give somebody an opportunity, even if you have to nudge them toward it,” he explains. “It doesn’t always work out, and that’s OK. But hopefully, we get people into the right place, and they end up creating a career that is meaningful and allows them to stay at our institution for decades.”
Dr. Hooks-Anderson, who was leaving the Saint Louis University School of Medicine, where she was on the faculty and the Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, concedes that she downplayed her experience and expertise to herself. Ultimately, she accepted the lead physician role. A year-and-a-half later she was named the Penn Primary Care Regional Medical Director for Philadelphia.
This, too, was not an anomaly. Dr. Teel and John C. Wood, MD, FAAFP, Executive Medical Director of Primary Care and Population Health for Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, have created a formal “Provider Leadership Development” ladder that clearly outlines a pathway to career advancement within Penn Primary Care and Lancaster General Health Primary Care, from practice provider to senior regional medical director and chief.
Dr. Teel says the concept came to him while he was reflecting on his own career at Penn Medicine and he realized it wasn’t a given that everyone would have the same access to potential career-advancing opportunities that he did.
“What we created is not perfect, but I think it’s a start,” he says.
While the framework is new, the practices it encompasses are not. Advancement and longevity are hallmarks of the typical Penn Primary Care career.
“What I’ve seen since I’ve been here, and have been very impressed with, is so many people have worked their way up through the ranks,” Dr. Hooks-Anderson says. “There are medical assistants who have become practice managers and staff physicians who have become lead practice physicians. And there are people who have been working here for more than 20 years, and they all have these wonderful stories about how they worked their way up, some to executive-level management.”
Learning on the job
Aileen John, DO, is one such physician. She started as a staff physician 10 years ago, assisting her lead physician however she could in between seeing patients. Today, Dr. John is the Penn Primary Care Regional Medical Director for Chester County.
Similar to Dr. Hooks-Anderson, Dr. John was encouraged to apply for the position when it became available four years ago. When she was offered it a few months later, she still had a hard time believing she was the right person for the job.
“I’m actually scared of public speaking, believe it or not, so I almost didn’t take the job just because I didn’t want to be in front of other people,” she says. “But I’ve learned that my patients are the most important thing to me. And if I’m in a role that can benefit them, either directly or by way of helping my colleagues, then I’m all for it.”
Dr. John admits that, without a business degree, she had to learn the job as she went. To aid in this effort, she enrolled in the Penn Medicine American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) Leadership Program. The yearlong program mixes lectures on topics like emotional intelligence, strategic decision making, and change management with networking, volunteering, mentoring, and studying for the FACHE Board of Governors Exam.
“It has greatly helped me to build stronger teams and improve my communication skills,” says Dr. John.
‘Healthcare needs leaders’
When Benjamin Sanfilippo-Cohn, MD, started at Penn Family Medicine Chestnut Hill about four-and-a-half years ago, leadership, he says, “was not on my radar.” But then the practice’s lead physician retired a couple years later, and Dr. Sanfilippo-Cohn was compelled to apply for the position (and, later, accept it).
“I don’t know that many of us go into medicine looking to be in leadership,” he says. “But healthcare certainly needs leaders.”
Last January, Dr. Sanfilippo-Cohn was chosen to participate in the Penn Medicine LEAP Physician Leadership seminar series, which he describes as “reassuring in one sense and enlightening in another.”
The event brought together aspiring leaders from across the health system. Dr. Sanfilippo-Cohn says that in talking with many of them, he realized the daily challenges he and his team face are not unique to their practice. And the presentations familiarized him with the system-wide resources available for addressing these issues.
“More than anything, the conference showed me there’s a lot of opportunity for growth at Penn Medicine,” he says. “And with almost any path I choose to pursue, there will be someone who can help me directly or show me the way. That’s a real advantage.”