OKCMGMA President, Shekinah Bishop

I am honored to serve as your Oklahoma City Chapter President in 2017. Your Board members and I will work this year to bring you relevant educational opportunities to help navigate the dynamic and sometimes nefarious path of healthcare delivery. With a little luck, we can also help add some fun and humor to the business of managing healthcare delivery.

I have been fortunate to have worked for years on the Board with our Past President, Julie Vallejo. I recognize I have “big shoes” to fill. Julie has been an outstanding President for the past two years. I look forward to and appreciate the opportunity to continue to work with her in 2017 while she remains on the Board as Past President. Thank you, Julie, for your commitment, your outstanding leadership, and your wisdom.

I bring to the group 16 years of experience in healthcare, including a wide range of experiences: member of the Code Blue team at a major hospital; working at a registration desk; an autopsy suite; a surgical pathology lab; credentialing; administrative management; compliance programs management; and practice systems management.

I graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2008 with a Bachelor’s in Biological Sciences, and this past summer I was certified by NAMSS as a Certified Professional Medical Staff Manager. My experience, while varied within healthcare settings, has largely humbled me, teaching me there is always so much more to learn.

As healthcare managers, we are on the forefront of a constantly evolving landscape with increasing demands on our staff, our providers, and ourselves. The current environment now includes historically unparalleled regulations, representing challenges and looming threats to our practice.

With that as our workplace setting, I believe 2017 is the year that the joy of managing healthcare can be found. We all now have some experience in this brave new world of healthcare, and we’ve learned we can manage it. As such, I believe we have a duty to put in place the right administrative controls to protect our patients, our providers, and our practices to foster an environment of security with confidence and peace of mind.

As a promising answer to strained healthcare resources, we now have available to us amazing technologies, far advanced from only a few years ago, with opportunity to leverage technology and improve cumbersome workflows. Providers want to spend more time with patients; patients want more time with providers; and no one wants to be buried in paperwork with a fear of failing to meet regulations.

This year, we will aim to build on the healthcare technology revolution we’ve undergone, and work towards building an enjoyable healthcare delivery workplace.

This will be a fantastic year!

Shekinah Bishop, CPMSM