Forest Kim

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor Leaders, professors, and more, discussing important topics in higher education, research, and student life.
I'm Derek Smith, and today we are visiting with Forrest Kim. Dr. Kim serves as the executive director of the Robbins Institute for Health Policy and Leadership, and co-director of the Robbins Healthcare MBA program, as well as serving as clinical associate professor in the Department of Economics in the Hankamer School of Business. The Robbins Institute for Health Policy and Leadership serves as an interdisciplinary foundation for all healthcare related initiatives in the Hankamer School of Business, including teaching, external programming, and health services research. The Robbins Healthcare MBA program is recognized as a top-20 healthcare program nationally by U.S. News & World Report.
Dr. Kim, who's with us today, is an Army veteran who served 22 years on active duty as a healthcare administrator and educator, and we're glad to have him here at Baylor now, and he's with us on the program. Dr. Kim, thanks so much for joining us.

Forrest Kim:
It's great to be here, thank you.

Derek Smith:
Great to have you here, and great to talk about these programs. I think people are aware Baylor does a great job in the area of developing people who are leaders in healthcare, future doctors, medical professionals, and leaders in healthcare organizations, but there's probably a lot most of us don't know, so I'm excited that we can dive into that with you today.

Forrest Kim:
Yeah, that's great, I'm excited to share.

Derek Smith:
Well, let me ask you, just to kind of start off, you think about this time of year here, we're near the end of April, near the end of a semester, what does this time of year bring for you as you work with students in the Healthcare MBA program? What are some things you enjoy about interacting this time of year?

Forrest Kim:
Yeah, so for me, I get the honor and privilege of teaching the bookends courses for the program. And so I teach the Introduction to Healthcare Administration in the fall, which provides the 30,000 view, if you will, of the U.S. healthcare system. And then the capstone, the students actually are, both the different tracks of our students, I get the opportunity to teach them, really focusing around disruptive innovation. And so the idea is that the students that have been in the program in their didactic year have the chance to do a deep dive, learn through a business lens the different discipline. But then on the back end, for those students that are with us for a year, we have the opportunity to really push them and to test them for them to think about ways that they can actually make improvements to our healthcare system.
For the students that are actually coming back from their administrative residency, on a separate track that I'll talk about here in a minute, those students have also had the opportunity to build upon the first year in the classroom and spend nine months in administrative residency at a healthcare organization doing rotations, working on projects, and really experience, if you will, the real world of healthcare. And for them to bring that experience back into the classroom, and also then to think about what are some changes that they would like to see within healthcare, that provides an opportunity for them to do that in the capstone.

Derek Smith:
Well, Dr. Kim, it's going to be interesting to really look into all the different ways our students here at Baylor running through your program impact healthcare. Let's make sure as we talk here, this is your world and we're all kind of delving into it, when we talk about the Robbins Institute and we talk about Robbins Healthcare MBA program, I want to make sure we don't cross wires with listeners. What are the short hands that you all use when we talk about these different things and how do they all fit together?

Forrest Kim:
Yeah. So Derek, that's a great question, there is quite a bit of confusion, I think, from folks when they hear about the name Robbins. And the best way that I would describe it is both the Robbins Institute and the Robbins Healthcare MBA are within the school of Business. We also have a separate school, Robbins College of Health and Human Science, and that particular school is completely separate from the business school. So we're talking two different schools, and the way that I describe it is different programs, same generous donor. So Bill and Mary Jo Robbins, stalwart donors and supporters of Baylor University and different programs on campus including, the Robbins College and within the Robbins Institute. But that's the best way that I would describe it, the Robbins Institute really focuses around the business of healthcare, which is separate from the programs that exist within the Robbins College.

Derek Smith:
I would imagine there's opportunities for faculty maybe to research partner from time to time, or to compare notes, but different streams of the same field.

Forrest Kim:
That's correct, that's correct.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Forrest Kim here, and Dr. Kim, you started us off with an overview, but let's delve in a little bit deeper. What makes this program distinct here at Baylor? And then we can dive into some of the rankings. But what makes this program distinct? There's other great programs out there to prepare leaders in healthcare business, why is Baylor special?

Forrest Kim:
Yeah, I would begin by describing the different tracks within our program. And so the track that's been around the longest is our administrative residency track, and that is over 20 years old. And the way that that track is set up is students are in the classroom for about a year, and then they spend in a paid administrative residency for nine months. And that's placements at top healthcare institutions around Texas, and actually around the country. We have folks at Baylor Scott & White, at HCA, at Kaiser in California, so a lot of great healthcare institutions. So that's the track that most folks would recognize about our program.
Another track is a pre-clinical track, and that track is actually a one-year healthcare MBA for students that are pursuing an advanced healthcare degree. So those would be folks primarily going off to med school, but we've had a couple of students that head off to dental school as well. And so that's our second track, and then our third track is a newly launched track, is our clinical track. And this is late breaking news, this is actually a partnership with Baylor College of Medicine, and it's an MD/MBA program. So this is a track for students that after their third year at Baylor College of Medicine have the opportunity to come to Baylor on campus here in Waco, complete their one-year healthcare MBA, and then return to Baylor College of Medicine to complete their fourth year of medical school.

Derek Smith:
Well, that's exciting, that seems like a fantastic partnership and opportunity, and thanks for breaking some news here on the program.
 

Forrest Kim:
On a couple other distinctives about the program. I think another thing that helps the program stand out is that we are a CAHME accredited program. CAHME is Commission on Accreditation for Healthcare Management Education, and it is the accrediting body for health management programs within the country. We are one of a handful of accredited healthcare MBAs. Most accredited programs in healthcare management are masters of healthcare administration programs, and so that's another distinction.
And then I talk about the administrative residency, and again, we are only a handful of programs that have a paid administrative residency as a part of our curriculum. So students, by actually matriculating into our program, get the classroom experience for the first year, but then very quickly, again, in that second year, nine months paid administrative residency, really boots on the ground in healthcare facilities, getting that practical experience. And they can get all of that, they return to campus for a two-week capstone, but they can finish their entire degree, including a paid administrative residency, within two years, and I don't think there are any programs in the country that have that timeline with the paid administrative residency.
And then the last point that I would acknowledge is, again, our Christian mission. And so I think Baylor, of course, mission is really focused on Christ, and in this case, we tend to attract students that are really, they may not all be Christians, but they come to the program with the desire to serve, certainly in the healing profession. So I would say that those are a few of our distinctives.

Derek Smith:
That's a great description as we visit with Dr. Forrest Kim in Baylor's Hankamer School of Business, he serves as the co-director for the Robbins Healthcare MBA program and executive director of the Robbins Institute for Health Policy and Leadership here at Baylor.
You painted this picture in part, but I'll ask even a little more deeply, there are plenty of great healthcare MBA programs out there that I'm sure you'd look at and say, that is a great healthcare MBA program, but you look, Baylor is in the top 20 as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. So I'm curious, brag on yourself and your colleagues even a little bit more, and your students, why is that? Why do you think Baylor rises to that level?

Forrest Kim:
So I think the first that I would acknowledge would be the strength of our alumni. And so when it comes to ranked programs, we're actually a fairly young program in that we're about 20 years old, 25 years old, but our alumni have done extraordinary work in the field. So they've moved on and very quickly advanced into the highest levels and highest positions within healthcare to include regional CEOs. And so I think that, probably of all things, I think the strength of our alumni and how well they have done, I think is probably the thing that makes us stand out the most.
In addition to that, very strong in accreditation. In our last accreditation, which was the fall of 2023, we scored a perfect score in our accreditation visit, and there are only four programs in accreditation history that have achieved that. And so we're really proud to have accomplished that, even though, again, that we've been around for about 25 years.
Our program also hosts a national case competition, called the Robbins Case Competition, and we invite 12 of the top health management programs in the country to come compete here at Baylor, and it's an opportunity for us to showcase and to market the program as well. And then the last thing I would note is the Baylor brand. The Baylor name is internationally recognized, and so I think that certainly helps when you're associated with other great institutions like Baylor College of Medicine, like Baylor Scott & White, and so that certainly helps, and I think the Baylor name kind of raises all boats.

Derek Smith:
Well, that's very exciting, and congratulations on the perfect score, that obviously rarefied air when you get something like that, especially when you paint the picture, one of only four of those, as we visit with Dr. Forrest Kim.
I want to know more, you mentioned the strength of your alumni is really the strength so much of the program, so would you paint a picture for us of who they are when they come here? Are they advanced in their career? Are they younger? Who would we, if we sat in on some of the classes, who's a cross-section who we'd see?

Forrest Kim:
Yeah, so one of the things that the Baylor MBA program did I think a few years back was make the intentional pivot to focus on early careerists. And so, as you might know, most MBA programs have probably anywhere between two to five years of required work experience before students can even apply to those programs. But as we looked back and saw the trends of the students that were actually applying for the Baylor MBA, we noticed that many of them were coming directly out of undergrad. And so we just made the decision, if you can't beat them, join them, and so we made the decision to double down on that focus of early careerists. And so that's what we've done. We don't have any requirements from a work experience standpoint, our students typically come to us with an average of one to two years, maybe, work experience into the program.
Most of those students, I would say, within the Healthcare MBA are coming from Baylor, so I'd say the majority of the students are coming directly, and it's a mix of undergraduate degrees. So a lot of science degrees, but also we have a variety of other undergraduate degrees represented, such as medical, humanities, or public health. And then about a third of the students are from universities outside of Baylor. Most of them are from Texas schools, so for example, Texas A&M and UT Austin, but we also have a few students that are also out of state. And so this year we welcomed a student from UCLA, we've got University of Virginia and University of Kentucky, BYU, a good broad mix of universities outside the state.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Forrest Kim here on Baylor Connections, talking Robbins Healthcare MBA program here on the program today. And as we think about these students, you're in such a changing industry, and I would imagine a few things play into, when you think about the industry in which you are going to send them into constantly changing, I'm just curious, how beneficial is it when your students serve these years, when they go to a hospital and they're on that track and then they come back, I'm curious, you're teaching them, but how much do you learn from students as they share their experience, and how much does that help you continue to grow along with the changes in the industry?

Forrest Kim:
Yeah. To that point, Derek, I think one of the strengths of the program is that we have a administrative residency that's actually a part of the curriculum. And so we actually visit our students typically once, twice a year in their administrative residency sites, and we meet with preceptors and the practitioners who actually are doing the work every day. And that gives us an experience to really figure out what keeps them up at night, and what are the issues that they're dealing with on the day-to-day, how are ways that the healthcare landscape is changing?
And we also have opportunity of bringing those practitioners back into the classroom. And so we have what's called an executive leadership speaker series that is facilitated by our executive residents, Joel Allison, the former president and CEO of the Baylor Scott & White healthcare system. And so in those types of opportunities, again, the students are hearing real time of what's happening in the workplace and the changes that are taking place.
From the students themselves, these are very bright students, and so they keep us on our toes. They're very sharp, they have lots of great questions, and many of them, I would say, are coming into the profession they want to serve, and so they have lots of questions. And so it's those questions that help us as professors, and as faculty, keep on the cutting edge of healthcare, and keep us also in that inquisitive headspace of asking questions and questioning the status quo.

Derek Smith:
We talk about the residency, you talk about experiential learning being a big part of the program. How intertwined on those, and are there other examples of that that are helpful?

Forrest Kim:
Absolutely. So even the students who are only here from a classroom perspective in about a year, we have a high emphasis on experiential learning. And so in the fall, we actually take all our students on an international trip, this is also our global health immersion, where they get opportunity to really find out how healthcare is done outside of the U.S. We think there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from looking at other healthcare delivery systems. And so that takes place in the fall.
In the spring, all the students, we take them for a week to the American College of Healthcare Executives Annual Congress on Healthcare Leadership, and this past year that Congress was held in Houston, so it was a short drive to Houston. But at that conference there were actually over 7,000 healthcare executives that were gathered for a series of continuing education sessions, lots of great plenary speakers, and so it's an opportunity for our students very early in their career to get exposed to the profession. It's a great networking opportunity, and so there's lots of opportunity to speak with other executives, and it's a great learning experience for them.
And then I'm really excited to mention that we are in the discovery phase of adding a missions trip to the program in the summer. There's an organization called Christian Community Health Fellowship, CCHF, that really is a professional association that provides encouragement and helps to increase awareness of the work that Christian clinics are conducting within the United States. And these are typically clinics that are located in underserved areas, either rural areas or inner city areas, and we're excited to partner with them on an ongoing annual missions trip.
Our first missions trip we're conducting, Joel and I are conducting a trip in July to Jellico, Tennessee, to a clinic called Dayspring that's in the Heart of Appalachia, and really excited to see opportunities of how we can serve there. The focus will really be on businesses missions, so we're looking to identify in advance of these trips health management projects that we can work on, that the students can work on when we get there, so there'll be kind of like mini consulting projects for these missions trips.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Forrest Kim here on Baylor Connections. Dr. Kim, as we head into the final few minutes of the program, I want to ask you a little bit, you came here, you've had some connection with Baylor over the years through the Army-Baylor program at Fort Sam Houston, as we mentioned, over two decades on active duty. I'm curious for you, this is probably a question you could spend another 20 minutes on, but what did you learn in Army Healthcare and what are some of those crossovers with, I guess we'll call it quote unquote, "Civilian healthcare," that have been meaningful to you as you lead this program?

Forrest Kim:
Yeah, I think if you think about comparing and contrasting the military healthcare system and Army medicine and civilian, I think probably the biggest difference that I would say is that within the military, and you probably would expect this, there's a lot more centralized command and control and hierarchy. And so the Army is very, very highly structured, and because of that, there's typically always someone in charge.
I compare that with the civilian healthcare system, and within the United States we have some really high quality care. But unfortunately, one of the downsides of care in the U.S. is it's highly fragmented. And so you can have a single individual that has a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, a physical therapist, in their insurance plan, and each of those individuals are part of different organizations. So when you think about the coordination that's required sometimes in healthcare, particularly for chronically ill patients, it's very challenging. And so from that front, I think military medicine and medicine in the Army was a lot easier from a coordination standpoint.
Certainly the financing is different within the military healthcare system, we have global budgets that are managed centrally, and also, because the military's mission is focused on readiness, there is a heavy emphasis on the military health system to ensure the fitness of military service members. And so there's, of course, a greater degree of investment into preventive medicine and the overall wellness of service members, and so that would be another big difference.
But really, at the end of the day, my experience in the military medicine and civilian medicine, you have teams of qualified caring professionals that are really focused on providing quality care for patients, and there's no difference there.

Derek Smith:
Well, obviously a great background as you are in a role like this here with students. Why was this the right opportunity for you to come to Baylor in 2019 and serve in this role?

Forrest Kim:
Yeah, so my story is I grew up in Southern California, I did my undergraduate work at UCLA. And growing up outside of Texas, I didn't know about Baylor. So I didn't even know that Baylor University was a thing, and it wasn't until I actually got accepted to the Army-Baylor program in San Antonio that I really discovered Baylor University. And when I started the program and I started to learn more about the institution and its mission, I fell in love. I didn't know that there was such a place in the country that really focused on providing excellent education for its students, but with an emphasis on its Christian mission.
And that was kind of the start of a desire to really be a part of the team here. I was a part of Army-Baylor faculty, again, for a number of years, and even when I was there, when I was experiencing my interactions with faculty and staff on campus, it's one of those things where in a lot of institutions, the more that you get to know the institutions, you kind of figure out where the bodies are buried and you figure where the skeletons are. But for me, the more time I spent with faculty and staff on campus, the more that I saw just quality individuals that were really committed to the Christian mission and really had a desire to serve these students well, and so it really made me desire to come to campus.
And in 2017 when I was retiring, Scott Garner, actually, who was the founding program director and who I co-direct the program with, actually came to my retirement ceremony and he extended the invitation to join the Baylor team, and from that point on it was just a process for me to join the team in 2019.

Derek Smith:
That's great. Well, Dr. Kim, we're grateful for the work you and your students are doing and excited to see that growth ahead, new partnerships, new opportunities, and I look forward to hearing that from you again here one of these days as they continue to grow.
Well, thanks so much for joining us, and congratulations on all the great, when you think about the honors the program has received, I know those are meaningful, but especially the work your students are doing that you get to share, and thanks for sharing that with us.

Forrest Kim:
Thank you, it's a privilege and honor to speak on behalf of the program and all the great faculty and staff, thank you.

Derek Smith:
Dr. Forrest Kim, executive director of the Robbins Institute for Health Policy and Leadership, and co-director of the Robbins Healthcare MBA program, our guest today on Baylor Connections.
I'm Derek Smith, a reminder you can hear this and other programs online at Baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.