Mar. 25—Rob Steen is learning hospital administration through real-world experience at Medical Center Hospital.

An Odessa native, Steen earned a bachelor's degree in business administration focused on marketing and management from Angelo State University and a master's in healthcare administration from Texas A&M University. Steen is now an administrative fellow at MCH.

"An administrative fellow is someone who has a degree, most likely a master's degree, that is trying to break into the workforce in their desired field. It's just a one-year fellowship. Some places offer 18 months or two-year fellowships. ... It's kind of a little bit of a continuing education, even though you already have that certain degree," Steen said.

His inspiration for getting into hospital administration was his mom who was a nurse at MCH.

"Whenever I was a child, and just watching her everyday routine, I would sometimes come up here and watch her. Whenever she got home, she would tell us stories of what she did. It just fascinated me. It actually sparked my interest to be an anesthesiologist. Once I started school, I decided that I'm better at business than I am at clinicals," Steen said.

He knew he still wanted to work in healthcare, but decided he could also make a difference on the business side.

"It's always changing, always evolving," Steen said of healthcare. "If you just look at the history of medicine ... people didn't know what it was, and how to cure a disease to know the advances that we've made and how we're still constantly advancing. We've involved robots recently ... so I think it's a stable field that's always going to be changing."

Steen has four months left in his fellowship.

"The plan right now is to find a job here at Medical Center," he added.

Steen came on board after COVID had started to die down, but he knew there were a lot of furloughs and layoffs at hospitals in general.

"That was a huge hit that not only Medical Center took, but most hospitals around the nation. It has led to a lot of staffing shortages ... Yes, there were some financial troubles that most hospitals took. However, I haven't necessarily noticed that here. I have noticed that finding people to come back, though, is a major issue," he said.

Just about everything has surprised him about working at the hospital.

"While you're in school, they seem to focus more on the business side of things. They don't necessarily talk about the operational side. I did a lot of finance classes and a lot of quality classes and patient experience classes. But I only took one operations class and it sparked my interest. It didn't necessarily allude to everything that was going to happen inside of a hospital. And so following Matt, and shadowing him and him being my mentor, I have definitely learned a lot more than I would in class and I have seen a lot of surprising things. Actually my second day on the job was whenever Odessa had the huge water crisis, so just having to go into emergency management mode and seeing that operation, it's very eye- opening," Steen said.

The Matt he's referring to is Medical Center Chief Operating Officer Matt Collins.

Another interesting aspect of his job is attending Ector County Hospital District board meetings.

"You have your direct bosses who they might be the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Operating Officer, the Chief Nursing Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, and, of course, all of the COO, CNO, CFO, they report directly to the CEO. He is their boss. Watching him technically be the ultimate boss of the hospital, you would think oh, he doesn't have to report to anybody. But no, he has seven bosses that he reports to, and they make all of the big, final decisions. (They) say so yes or no on what we can and cannot do," Steen said.

Something he has enjoyed is the hospital community.

"It's a different community when you step inside these doors. We're focused on patient care, and getting the job done — whether that be clinical side or non-clinical side. We want to make sure that we're providing the best that we can for anybody that steps foot in these doors. I think, as you've interviewed others, you may have noticed that we have extensive renovations going on to certain parts of our hospital. It's so that we can provide the best care and for anybody," Steen said.

Previously, Steen worked for a small public hospital in College Station while he was finishing his master's degree in the materials management department.

"Any shipment that came in, I received it and put it into our system and made sure that it was distributed to the patient floors, and to the business office, because we also would order their paper and everything. Going from that side of healthcare to where I am now ... it makes you appreciate and see that there are hundreds of hands in the cookie jar. And everyone is doing their best in everything that they possibly can to make sure that patients are satisfied and given the best quality care," Steen said.

Steen said Collins has been a great mentor to him.

"Rob has done a great job," Collins said. "It is such a pleasure to have a young person graduated from a prestigious college that is spending here with us, learning how healthcare leadership and the healthcare industry works and then to help prepare him for a larger scale leadership position in the healthcare community is very, very rewarding."

Collins said they traditionally have one fellow each year from Texas A&M. It's not required that they be from A&M, but that's where they have come from so far.

"It's a pathway into leadership positions, but it's a great opportunity for the fellow to see all aspects of the hospital — everything from how the housekeeping department works to how the pharmacy department works, to how executive strategic planning works. He gets a very broad view of the entire processes of healthcare to help prepare him for his future role," Collins said.