In this episode of High Velocity Careers, Stone Payton speaks with Dr. Daniel Fortes, Division Chief of Thoracic Surgery at Wellstar, and Will Chilvers, the Director of Outpatient Imaging Services at Northside Hospital. They discuss their unique career paths, the challenges they face in healthcare, and the importance of combining clinical expertise with business acumen.
Daniel shares his journey from Brazil to the U.S. and his transition from academia to private practice. Will highlights his background in healthcare administration and process improvement. Both emphasize the need for teamwork, effective communication, and continuous learning to drive improvements in patient care.
Dr. Daniel L. Fortes currently serves as the Division Chief of Thoracic Surgery at WellStar Health System, headquartered in Marietta, Georgia.
Dr. Fortes was born in Brazil and completed his medical education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro School of Medicine, graduating in 1999. He then pursued a General Surgery Residency at the same institution before continuing his training in the United States at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio with further specialization in Thoracic Surgery at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Beyond his medical training, Dr. Fortes recently earned an Executive MBA from Kennesaw State University. His professional journey included private practice and academic appointments.
Before moving to Georgia in 2021, Dr. Fortes served as an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Texas at Austin, Dell Medical School and a Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery at Texas A&M Health Science Center.
Dr. Fortes work focuses on minimally invasive and robotic surgery for cancers of the chest, most predominantly Lung Cancer. He is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish, a lifelong drummer, a father of two teenage children and a dedicated husband.
Connect with Dr. Fortes on LinkedIn.
Will Chilvers is the Director of Outpatient Imaging Services at Northside Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. With over 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry, his career began in 2008 at Emory Healthcare, where he swiftly advanced from intern to Clinical Operations Manager of The Emory Eye Center within two years.
Seeking new challenges, Will transitioned to Northside Hospital, where he became the Manager of the Pain Treatment and Spine Centers and Outpatient Radiology locations. In 2015, he was promoted to Director of Outpatient Imaging Services.
As a leader, Will is known for his ability to blend a heart-and-soul approach with the strategic use of complex analytics to build and sustain high-performing teams. He is committed to maintaining an extraordinary level of compassion in patient care and believes that caring for one’s team should be at the core of any healthcare leader’s vision and mission.
Will is a two-time graduate of Kennesaw State University, holding both a Bachelor of Business Administration and an Executive MBA from the Michael J. Coles College of Business.
Connect with Will on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for High Velocity Careers. Brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA Program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. For more information, go to kennesaw.edu/emba. Now, here’s your host.
Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of High Velocity Careers. Stone Payton here with you this morning. This is going to be a good one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast Mr. Will Chilvers. How are you, man?
Will Chilvers: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
Stone Payton: Well, it is a delight to have you on the broadcast. We also have Mr. Daniel Fortes with us. How are you, man?
Daniel Fortes: I’m great, thank you very much.
Stone Payton: I got a ton of questions, guys. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a good place to start, I’m going to ask each of you, if you would, and I’m going to start with you, Daniel, if that’s okay, maybe could you give us a little bit of an overview of your career path? And, I don’t know, maybe even a couple of milestones along the way. How did you get here, man?
Daniel Fortes: Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks. So, I think probably starting with where my origins are. I’m originally from Brazil. I grew up in Rio de Janeiro. And I had early ties to the U.S. since my, you know, puberty years, and I lived in the U.S. as a teenager. I went back to Brazil, finished schooling, and then decided to get into medical school.
Daniel Fortes: So, I got to medical school, and then I realized that I wanted to come to the States for training. So, that ended up happening in 2001, where I married my lovely wife, and we moved from Rio to San Antonio, Texas, where I did the first part of my training as a general surgeon. Then, I decided that I wanted to pursue further training, and I went to Minnesota at the Mayo Clinic, where I did my cardiothoracic surgery training. And then, from that point on, I decided that academia wasn’t what I was looking for in medicine. I really wanted to be more patient-centered, so I took a job in private practice in the Washington, D.C. area in Northern Virginia. That was very informative. I learned a bunch from older senior partners.
Daniel Fortes: And then, from there, my entrepreneurial sort of motivations took me to Austin, Texas, where I joined a very large group in the city, and I was the first person that did what I do, which is essentially thoracic oncology, which is lung cancer, robotic surgery. So, it was very exciting as an opportunity early on in my career – I was only four years out of training – to go to Austin to build from scratch a thoracic oncology program. So, that’s kind of how it started my journey.
Daniel Fortes: Hitting some hiccups in the way and some frustrations, and realizing how physicians truly are dependent these days on hospital administration and their support, and with that, you know, things in Austin did not turn out to be what it was expected to be, and I moved to Georgia, to Atlanta three years ago to seek new grounds, with opportunities for leadership here.
Daniel Fortes: And then, soon thereafter, I took over the directorship of our division here at Wellstar, and realized that I needed more business skills, that for me to be able to track what I saw as my next step in my career, to really be able to be a leader in defining healthcare in a different way, and empowering physicians to have more say in how medicine is done and how the business of medicine is conducted led me into joining the KSU EMBA program, which we graduated in May last year, myself and Will.
Stone Payton: Will, this guy can’t hold a job. That’s what I took from all that. No. I’m kidding. All right. So, say again where you are now. What are you doing right now?
Daniel Fortes: So, right now, I’m a thoracic surgeon at Wellstar. I’m the Chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery.
Stone Payton: So, what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about that work for you, man?
Daniel Fortes: So, again, medicine is something that is very demanding. And to me, it’s really the direct patient contact. That’s one thing that really fulfilled me for the longest time. And no matter what happened around, as long as I had good relationships with my patients and I could see them and do how I saw fit, it was good enough. And then, soon thereafter, I realized that there were so many things to be fixed in healthcare, that simply being a practicing physician wasn’t providing as much fulfillment as initially did, that I really wanted to be able to change things for the better for all.
Daniel Fortes: Now, healthcare, I mean, lots of issues with staffing, with patient’s rights, physician rights, and wellbeing and finance, I mean, there’s so many issues going on and so many challenges, and I want to be part of that solution rather than just sitting on the backend, you know, doing my day-to-day job.
Stone Payton: I apologize, Will, that’s going to be a tough act to follow. This guy’s accomplished a lot.
Will Chilvers: Yeah. When you asked him to go first, I had that exact feeling.
Stone Payton: Well, tell us how you got here, man. What’s your backstory?
Will Chilvers: Yeah. Well, interestingly enough, I’m actually not from the U.S. either. I was born in the UK. I moved to Florida when I was ten years old. And I actually moved because my dad, who’s an entrepreneurial spirit at heart, serial entrepreneur really most of his life, he was asked to come and help start a doctor’s office by a friend of ours. And so, that was my first kind of exposure into the life of a healthcare person. And he was the administrator of this practice, and he ended up moving into hospitals.
Will Chilvers: And so, I spent countless hours on the porch with my dad just constantly hearing about a healthcare administrator, the administration side, the hospital administration side, as Daniel mentioned, working with physicians and how those relationships materialize and how critical those links are to any sort of success in healthcare. It really is a partnership between the two sides. So, I kind of come at it from a different side in that perspective.
Will Chilvers: I moved up to Georgia in 2002, and I actually did my undergraduate at Kennesaw State. I did a business degree there. And so, after I was done with that, I was able to get an internship at Emory Healthcare here in Atlanta, Georgia. And, you know, speaking of healthcare needing improving and realizing how much it needed that, I actually started as a process improvement analyst after that internship. I was hired on by them after a two month internship to be a process improvement analyst at the Emory Clinic.
Will Chilvers: And there’s all sorts of evaluating, and sitting around, and observing the physicians in their environments, and coming up with ways that we could operate more efficiently, how their time could be more value add, trying to eliminate the waste because people talk a lot about how much waste there is in healthcare. And so, I spent a lot of time working with the doctors trying to figure out how do we let you focus on the patient care component of your job and less on the administrative side of the fence and kind of the busywork, if you will. So, that’s kind of how I got into healthcare. I ended up getting promoted a few times while I was there. I ended up as a clinical operations manager, but I was still a process improvement analyst. So, by the time I left there, I had three jobs.
Will Chilvers: And I moved to Northside in 2010, Northside Hospital here in Atlanta, Georgia as a manager of their pain treatment, spine centers, and radiology outpatient centers. And I’ve been there now. Since then, we did a lot of different things there. I spent some time in the hospital. I was the manager of their Atlanta Hospital Radiology Department for a year, which exposes you to all the modalities throughout the hospital. You work with cardiology. You work with emergency department. You work with the intensive care units. You work with surgery. And working in a hospital environment really enlightens you to just how many facets there are to healthcare. And that was an amazing experience. I really enjoyed that.
Will Chilvers: And then, we got into a lot of merger and acquisition type things. I don’t know if you know, but a lot of people that are in healthcare certainly do, oftentimes a hospital is putting their sign on something all over town. You see urgent cares with a Piedmont or a Wellstar sign pop up. Northside has signs on buildings all over town that have become sort of medical office buildings for us. And we’ve affiliated with different practices around North Georgia. And I was heavily involved in that on the imaging front when we went out and bought a lot of independent imaging facilities to help support our affiliations and our relationships with physicians in the more rural areas around Georgia. So, that was also a pretty exciting experience. And that’s kind of how I’ve ended up where I am today.
Stone Payton: And where are you today? What’s your role today?
Will Chilvers: So, I’m a Director of Radiology Services at Northside Hospital, specifically focused in outpatient imaging services. And I currently cover a region from Acworth to Warner Robins, which is down south of Macon, so it’s a pretty good spread.
Stone Payton: So, you described having an opportunity to work in and around a lot of different disciplines, that strikes me as a best practice probably for a variety of industries. Would you agree with that?
Will Chilvers: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, not even just the various different sort of modalities within a hospital system, if you will, but also the different business modalities that exist within it. You know, I’ve had a lot of interaction with revenue cycle, with finance, with analysis of capital planning and strategic, heavily involved in the operations, obviously. But just touch points throughout the system really gives you a very broad understanding of, not only the different clinical components, the different departments within a hospital system, but also a business in general, a very large business, you know, you’ve got departments for everything.
Daniel Fortes: And that’s the thing – kind of sort of jumping in – that is a striking contrast to now the medical delivery part of the system, which is physicians really have absolutely no business background or knowledge. There’s nothing that is taught during their entire career, unless they did it on their own. Now, things are changing, finally. This new generation will come with different skills than we had. But all the names that you mentioned, business cycles, et cetera, I mean, this is something that physicians go, “What is that? I have no idea.” So, you know, that dichotomy is huge because then healthcare is being managed by non-physicians and physicians don’t understand the management of healthcare, so it’s crazy.
Stone Payton: Wow. So, what are some of the major leadership challenges that you guys have run into over that path? I wonder if they’re very different than they are in other arenas. I’m curious to know things that maybe really caught you off guard at least the first time you were faced with it. And I’ll start with you, Daniel, but I’d love to hear from both of you on that front.
Daniel Fortes: So, you know, initial challenges as you start practice, you’re like, “Well, I have a great idea how to make things better, but I have no idea how to make it happen.” So, I go into a boardroom with a bunch of administrators and I go, “This is what we have to do. It’s so obvious, right? This is going to improve patient care. It’s got all this stuff.” And they go, “Well, it doesn’t really work that way. How are we going to do? How are we going to budget for that?” And then, you go, “Oh. I have no idea.”
Daniel Fortes: And then, you realize that you might have great ideas, but, again, great ideas are plentiful. What matters is how to implement them. And that lack of knowledge is huge in being able to make true changes in healthcare. So, I think you need both parts. So, I think we need more administrators with more clinical background and, vice versa, more clinical people with more administrative background.
Stone Payton: How about you, Will?
Will Chilvers: Oh, I think that’s a really good kind of tee up, because I think as Daniel was talking about physicians not having that sort of business background in a lot of cases, and how that creates struggles in those areas, and sometimes misunderstandings, miscommunications about what can be done, what is possible and why. Because sometimes the why doesn’t really jive with us, right? It doesn’t give us a good feeling. Like, that’s a silly why. I understand it, but that’s a silly why.
Will Chilvers: But the biggest leadership challenges that I see often stem from leaders who have a clinical background not understanding the whys and the hows of the business. Because most of our leaders are former nurses or former radiologic technologists, or they’ve been in the line, if you will, they might not be physicians, but certainly at the operations level, they’ve worked their way up through the ranks, which makes sense because they have an intimate understanding of how the operation works, how the patient flow occurs.
Will Chilvers: But they don’t have any formal training necessarily on how exactly can we make this better. How exactly does this all play in with all of the other stuff in the background that’s happening, like we talked about. You know, if you’re a clinical person, you might not understand revenue cycle or all the complexities involved in not only how do you get the patient on the schedule, but how do you get paid at the end of the day. And so, there’s a lot of kind of breakdown there that’s not their expertise, and so they’re just kind of trying to figure it out.
Will Chilvers: And then, on the flip side of it, you have people like myself who have no clinical background, other than my own personal experience in healthcare interactions with physicians, and people are like, “Well, what do you know about how to operate this place? You’re not a doctor, you’re not a nurse, you’re not a tech. You just got a bunch of big ideas and you’re standing here spouting at us why we should be doing this differently.”
Will Chilvers: And it really is a great thing to see a team come together and see the light bulbs go off to say, “Oh, from a clinical perspective, you have now enlightened me from a business perspective why this can or can’t be done.” And then, on the business side of the front, someone like myself learning the nuance and the complexities associated with clinical care as to why this great, efficient business idea that’s going to save money and make money all at the same time maybe isn’t in the best interest from a patient care perspective.
Stone Payton: Daniel, everything I know about doctoring, you could stick in your eye and still see out, but it seems like you guys are already so busy. Where in the world did you find the time? How did you find the time to pursue an executive MBA, man?
Daniel Fortes: I’m still asking myself that same question. Because to be honest with you, as exciting as it was, I enjoyed every single weekend that we had classes. And I specifically chose KSU because it was something that I could fit into my schedule because I couldn’t really change my clinical schedule. It’s not like I took a sabbatical to do this, right? I have to do it on the side. So, I enjoyed every single moment, but it just takes a toll on everything else.
Daniel Fortes: So, actually, by the time we were finishing, I was having my own stress test and EKGs and Holter monitors and check because of stress. I mean, it was tough. Of course, many, many long hours on top of regular hours and many weekends on top of the call weekends that already existed. So, yeah, as hard as it was, it wasn’t as hard as training. So, in a way, sort of the history behind on how we get to where we get from a clinical perspective helped me, you know, be able to sort of hunker down and get this done. But it was not easy, I tell you that.
Stone Payton: Well, I certainly applaud you, and I don’t mean to dismiss the time commitment and the energy and the resources you invested as well. Will, if you remember, what initially compelled you to pursue an executive MBA?
Will Chilvers: I think there were a lot of different factors. I found myself in different rooms with different levels of people throughout as I’ve gotten farther on in my career where they just seem so much smarter than I was. And at this point in time, I’d been in healthcare for 15 plus years, and I felt like I had a pretty good handle on things. But when you get in the room with the directors of finance and various different vice-presidents, and you listen to things that they’re talking about, you start to wonder maybe I need more tools in the toolbox, or maybe I need to sharpen the somewhat blunt ones that I have right now. And so, I kind of felt that way for a little while.
Will Chilvers: I also felt like a lot of the opportunities for advancement and growth in the field often require a more advanced degree than just a bachelor’s degree. And so, I was like, well, between seeing these people that have these degrees, and seeing just how incredibly intelligent they are and the tools that they use to help make their decisions, I’m obviously missing out on something. And so, I started exploring the different opportunities to participate in a program.
Will Chilvers: And I actually looked at lots of different programs around the metro Atlanta area. And I ended up coming back to my old alma mater here at Kennesaw State University. And I’m really glad that I did, and part of that was, as Daniel said, the way the program is structured, it really just sort of aligned with my ability to continue working, because aside from our local residency and then our international residency at the end of the program, I didn’t take any time off work to do the program.
Will Chilvers: As well as the components of both the business modalities, which is part of every MBA program, but the personal and professional development growth track that sort of ran parallel with the program was really kind of exciting to me. I’ve asked myself a lot of questions over the years about who am I, what am I doing with my life, where am I supposed to be. And that was really probably one of my favorite parts of the program is just learning a lot more about myself. There was a lot of deep introspective thinking and writing that went in alongside this program while we were learning about finance, and accounting, and economics, and marketing.
Will Chilvers: And that thinking as I thought along the way is like, nobody’s ever made me think like this. Nobody’s ever made me really dig down deep inside my soul and bring that out and say this is who I am, and this is how I got here, and these are the things I want to change.
Daniel Fortes: And to couple that, too, the teaming component of it, I think it’s very unique the fact that from the beginning we’re set up in teams. But you don’t know —
Stone Payton: Say more about that.
Will Chilvers: I think that was the scariest part, if we’re being honest.
Daniel Fortes: Yeah, it was. All of a sudden, it’s like, “Okay. You’re going to sink or swim with your team so you got to make it work.” So, from the beginning, you’re really learning those interpersonal skills, those leadership skills, those working as a team kind of principle from the get-go. And I think that is very unique and great. Because there’s some, Do I want to sit in a class by myself watching a finance lesson and then go home, do the homework, and come back? No. No. I want to discuss it. I put this in real perspective on real projects with my team working together, dividing tasks. It was phenomenal.
Stone Payton: And I suspect that’s a much more accurate reflection of real life, right?
Will Chilvers: Oh, yeah. The philosophical debates that Daniel and I have had about healthcare over the last two years, it’s just endless. I mean, we could have gone on forever trying to solve the problems of the world like we all want to do.
Stone Payton: I’ll give you a little bit of a heads up, Will, those life purpose questions, those will continue even when your hair is as white as mine, so those aren’t going away.
Will Chilvers: Thanks for that. I appreciate it.
Stone Payton: I had a mentor early in my career that told me, he said, “Stone, competency is really a moving target.” And he was trying to impress this life learning mentality on me and trying to help me get my arms around the fact that, man, things are going to change and you’re going to have to learn, not only how to personally adapt to that, but you’re going to have to lead other people through that. I’d love to hear your thoughts on planning and executing change. I got to believe it’s rampant in the healthcare arena like it is in some others.
Daniel Fortes: No, for sure. That’s exactly something I learned. One of my mentors, too, I never really understood what he meant. He came to me, “Dan, one day you have to realize that you have to sort of reinvent yourself every five to seven years.” And I go, “What do you mean? I mean, I don’t know what that means.” And then, through life, now I’m 20 plus years in healthcare, it’s like, “Oh. I get that.” Because your perspective of life, your perspective of the job, of everything that you do changes as you gain more experience, as you age, as you gain life experience, family, and all those things, your prerogatives and your focus has changed. And that’s absolutely right and how to change that.
Daniel Fortes: And so, this is my cycle of renovation for this, I guess, fourth, five-year stint of my innovation. So, yeah, absolutely, that’s key. That’s key. The world continues to evolve. And if you stay behind, you literally stay behind.
Will Chilvers: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the interesting things that Professor Davis shared with us – and I think he stole this from somewhere. But he admitted that, he said he got it from somewhere – is better, better, better better. We all want to wave a magic wand and fix everything, right? We spend so much time, like, how do we fix this in a big way? And the reality is that those sort of mass sweeping, immediate changes are very unrealistic for so many reasons.
Will Chilvers: And they are beyond unrealistic in healthcare in many, many ways. And part of that is because you’ve got to be able to maintain patient care every minute of every hour of every day. There’s no stopping the machine, if you will. So, you can’t say, let’s shut this whole place down, tear all this to pieces, and build it all back up in the 21st century. We’ve got thousands of years, really, of evolution in the industry of people being sick, and people being made a little bit better, and a little bit better, and a little bit better. And hopefully, our ability to provide care to our patients is better today than it was yesterday.
Will Chilvers: And so, in terms of how do we do it, how do we keep it up, how do we make these changes, how do we improve, it really is just the ultimate better, better, better, better. Like every single day we’re having a conversation about how do we make this one little thing a little bit better. And for some of us, that can be really frustrating at times, because you’re like this whole thing stems from this setup, or the way we bill, or the way we collect, or the way we answer the phones, or the way we still use fax machines. You got to love healthcare for that.
Daniel Fortes: That is unbelievable.
Stone Payton: Is that true?
Daniel Fortes: Oh, yeah. So true.
Will Chilvers: Every single day.
Daniel Fortes: So, you want to talk about like evolution, right? We’re still hanging on to some relics, and for different reasons. A lot of that is HIPAA compliance. Funnily enough, that’s just one of the ways that has been deemed that’s a fairly secure way of transmitting information.
Will Chilvers: And nobody can steal a fax, I guess.
Daniel Fortes: Yeah, say that. I’m sure there’s ways that can be done. Somebody will post in the comments if that’s a thing. So, we spend so much time thinking about if we could just get healthcare into the 21st century, things would be so much better. But you can’t stop it. You can’t stop everything, throw it all out, bring it all back together in this new, modern era.
Daniel Fortes: And everybody in every healthcare organization around the country and around the world is in a little bit of a different place. They might be a little bit ahead, they might be a little bit behind, but we’re all trying every single day to make people’s lives just a little bit better and provide a little bit better care than we were able to provide yesterday.
Will Chilvers: Yeah. And it’s quite amazing, right? If you’ve ever been part – and I know you have and so have I – of really major changes in operations or whatever that happens at a hospital level or at a clinic level, the disruption is amazing. I guess it’s not something you shut down a production line for a week and you get it done. I mean, you can’t. So, there are people just pouring in, and then all of a sudden, you’re inability to actually care for the people that need you because you wanted to make this one change, and sometimes it’s like a software update – I mean, not to mention what just happened recently. But because that shut down all the hospitals in Atlanta, by the way. If people don’t know, all hospitals were affected by the CrowdStrike issue.
Stone Payton: Oh, wow.
Will Chilvers: I got a call at 3:00 in the morning, I need everybody in the hospital here because there’s no orders for any of this, 700 patients are in the hospital. The nurses don’t know what to give anybody. So, we had one printer in the pharmacy printing prescriptions for every single patient in the hospital at 3:00 in the morning so the nurses could keep up their work. I mean, it’s to that level. So, anyway, yeah, it’s a pretty tough business.
Stone Payton: Yeah. And when you disrupt that established pattern, you’ve got this human dynamic that you’re dealing with, and it’s not like they’re all in the same place mentally at the same time. You’ve got someone that’s in denial, you’ve got somebody else that’s kind of got past it and said okay. I mean, and you’re managing a lot of people at all these different stages of how they’re going to respond to that disruption, right?
Will Chilvers: Yeah, yeah. And then, when you realize how labor intensive healthcare industry is, we are the biggest employers on any city that you have big healthcares, because the number of people that you actually need people to care for people. So, a disruption here, I mean, Wellstar has as many employees just here in the Atlanta metro area than the big top ten 500 corporations in the U.S. They’re spread all over a few. But here, it’s just so concentrated and so dependent. So, if you change one thing for you to really decimate it through that huge population is ginormous.
Daniel Fortes: Yeah. It’s interesting, during our international residency, we went to Santiago in Chile, and we met with a mining company. And the gentleman that was speaking was talking about how old their systems are and how they’re constantly having people come in and say we can automate this, we can digitize this, we can make this more efficient. And the thing that he said, we cannot stop operations. They cannot go down. The robust nature of this system, this process is critical. And he was talking about it from a revenue perspective. They made so much money that any interruption to their operations, to their ability to continue to produce out of this mine was just considered catastrophic because of the money that they would have lost.
Will Chilvers: And you throw that into the healthcare environment, there’s a huge impact from a revenue perspective when operations don’t work. But you’re talking about people’s lives. You bring in the human element. I mean, really, that’s what it comes down to, is your inability, when anything prevents you from being able to care for that patient, sometimes the seconds matter. I mean, Dan knows this more than anybody in what he does.
Will Chilvers: And so, just the appetite for risking that in the interest of sweeping changes in “fixing healthcare” – big topic. Like, healthcare is broken, it needs fixing – the appetite and the ability to make the kind of changes that we theorized would “fix it” or fix a part of it, even, you’re always considering that against what the risk is there to your ability to see those patients, and care for those patients, and just how delicate that ecosystem can be, as evidenced by the recent CrowdStrike outage.
Stone Payton: Well, the stakes are so high in your world in the price of failure. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, either one of you get involved at all in recruitment, selection, development of folks? The reason I’m asking, I’m interested to know, like, what do you look for in terms of leadership skills and credentials and all that? But I’m also kind of interested, do you and your team, do you look for – I’ll call them -intangibles? Speak to that a little bit.
Will Chilvers: Yeah. I mean, all the time. I often share with my team, I’m like, you got to be a whole package deal. You could be the best tech in the world, the best nurse in the world, quite frankly, the best physician in the world, but if you don’t show up or if you’re not punctual and timely, if you’re not good with people, it’s just not going to work out. You’ve got to have the bedside manner. You’ve got to have the ability to talk, and care, and be compassionate, and be skillful in whatever modality is that you’re in.
Will Chilvers: And so, it’s easier to assess do they have the skills. You know, you can put them in a room, you can put them on a machine, you can give them an IV start kit., whatever it is, whatever the job is, and say, “Go. Here, do it on me.” And you can determine they’re pretty good with this equipment, whatever that might be. But you spend a lot of your time figuring out, does this person really care? Do they love sort of the mission of healthcare, if you will, of helping patients get better? And are they able to work in a team?
Will Chilvers: Because every interaction in healthcare involves some sort of a team, and often the team is very fluid. There’s five people that work together in the beginning, and then half of those people move into the next team, and the next team, and the next team, and so it’s just like this big constant back and forth in waves of these people all having to work together and trust each other.
Will Chilvers: And that was a huge thing that we talked a lot about in the program, in the executive MBA program, is, trust and just how critical that is in the ability to provide. Because if Dan doesn’t trust me as a healthcare administrator to have his best interest and his patient’s best interest at heart, it’s going to be very difficult for us to come up with solutions that help the patients at the end of it all. And the same goes for every single interaction throughout healthcare.
Will Chilvers: So, when you’re recruiting these people, when you’re interviewing people, when you’re developing people from a staff level position into a leadership level position, you’ve got to have a real good kind of finger on the pulse, if you will, about where their head is at and where their heart is at, and can you trust them to do the right thing always.
Will Chilvers: And some of that comes from you as a leader. If you instill an environment where people are afraid of being in trouble because the stakes are so high, and so anytime something goes wrong, which it does, things go wrong, there’s a huge human element in everything that we do and people make mistakes. And so, if people feel like every time they make a mistake, they’re going to get in trouble, it kind of encourages people to try and sweep things under the rug, or I didn’t see it, or let me fix it. I’m going to fix it. I’m gonna fix it. I’m gonna make it right. And sometimes they make it worse. And they need to come to you and ask for help.
Will Chilvers: And so, as a leader in healthcare, you’ve got to instill that it’s okay. I’m here. I’ve got your back. Stuff happens. I need you to tell me what’s going on so I can help you. And that comes with compassion and love for the people that work for you. And if you don’t have that, it’s going to be tough for you to be really successful as a healthcare leader because your people have got to come to you when something’s going wrong. Otherwise, it just goes sideways very quickly.
Daniel Fortes: Yeah. You know, the clinical side is very similar because, at the end, you can probably teach skills to most people. Sure, you’re looking for a microcerebral surgeon, that guy needs to have the skill if you’re going to hire him. But for the most part, in terms of the ancillary team that supports, which is 90 percent of people taking care, physicians is just a minuscule part of the patient care. Focused on physician is wrong, because, really, healthcare is much more that one encounter from the physician is much smaller than the entire team that actually cares for the patient throughout their journey.
Daniel Fortes: So, those folks, as long as they show the skills that they can learn, really what we’re looking for is, first, the interpersonal skill. I mean, can you truly care for people? Are you interested in helping others? And are you reliable when you don’t know something to reach out? You need to. So, that’s kind of what we look, maybe the resume gets you in the door, but at the end of the day, it’s always that one-on-one interaction, personal values, and all that really are crucial for our industry.
Stone Payton: So, Dan, what do you do when you’re not doctoring, man? Most of our listeners know that I like to hunt, fish, and travel. What do you do when you’re not doing this?
Daniel Fortes: Yeah. So, actually I’ve taken quite a bit of hiatus because of this program, but my lifelong passion is music. I’ve been a drummer since age 12. And I’m not going to officially say, but one of the reasons to move to Austin was the music scene as well, so there was another stimulus. I had multiple bands. I used to play out all the time. But since I moved to Atlanta, that has gone into the back door. So, yeah, that’s part of my new program now, it’s go back and find a new band and keep rocking out. Absolutely.
Stone Payton: We got to get you back out there, man. You got to come play Woodstock.
Daniel Fortes: Oh, God.
Stone Payton: How about you, Will, what do you do to kind of get away and recharge?
Will Chilvers: Yeah. I mean, I’ve got a got a lot of hobbies, but I guess my main ones and I didn’t really get into it, but I actually started out my career in residential construction. And so, I still play in that area in my own home, so I do a lot of stuff around the house. I have a shop that I built.
Will Chilvers: But my other passion is cars. I’ve always loved cars. I’ve loved cars since I was a little kid, as long as I can remember. My dad had some stuff that I thought was cool back in the day and it just kind of stuck, and so I’ve got a shop and I weld a little bit. But I fix, rebuild, replace, engine swap, just any kind of thing I can get into in that environment and something that I find a little bit interesting.
Daniel Fortes: We got some funny stories here, come a weekend of the NBA and then, Will, “Oh, yeah. I went that weekend to some warehouse and then I came back with a new Mercedes.” He’s telling this story — “I’ll buy that car.”
Will Chilvers: And old Mercedes. Yeah, I mean, literally that happened, like, at the end of the semester. I went on a guy’s weekend with some buddies, and a friend of mine has a lot up in Knoxville, Tennessee. And he had this really cool Mercedes wagon just sitting in the lot. And I was like, “Where’d you get that from?” He’s like, “Oh. I bought it at the auction.” I was like, “Yeah, okay.” I didn’t think much of it. I went away for the weekend, came back, went back through, I was like, “Do you want to sell it?” And came home with it. I drove it home. My buddy drove my other car and I drove it 200 miles home that day. And I’ve been working on it since then.
Will Chilvers: And, actually, so you asked what do you do, I try to spend time with my kids. They’re still young enough that they think I’m cool sometimes. My 15 year old, you know, dwindles but goes away quickly. But we’ve been working on that car together with the hope that it’s going to become her car, and so that’s been a lot of fun. But those are my sort of main hobbies.
Stone Payton: All right. We got a plan. We’re going to hop in the wagon and we’re going to come to your gig.
Daniel Fortes: And I love the fact that the Englishman bringing wagons back in.
Will Chilvers: Oh, yeah. I love a station wagon. Americans do not appreciate them.
Daniel Fortes: I love them, too. I can’t get one here.
Stone Payton: All right. Before we wrap, I’d love it if we could leave the high potential person that really wants to accelerate their career. They’re thinking through, “Okay. What should I be doing?” And I don’t know if it’s what they should be reading, something they should do or don’t do. But from each of you, gentlemen, if we could have at least, maybe one kind of actionable pro tip, man, if you’re thinking about continuing that career path and you really want to accelerate your career, any insight, perspective, advice, scar tissue? Let’s leave them with a couple of nuggets before we wrap.
Daniel Fortes: Scar tissue, I think that’s probably the most valuable learning from my perspective and my journey. Again, physicians are very self-centered. You know, I know it all. It’s all about me. You know, I know how to do things better. And you realize how small you are in the actual cogwheel of the whole industry, and how important it is to develop personal relationships and networking and get, so that, that one-to-one and knowing your administrators and the people, that is absolutely crucial for you to be successful. Unless you just want to hunker down in your little cubbyhole and keep doing the same thing, but then you’re like a production industry person.
Daniel Fortes: So, interpersonal skills, understanding that you are very small, no matter how high power you think you are or how important you think you are, it’s just you’re still part of a ginormous team and you need to truly be part of it.
Will Chilvers: Yeah. I mean, people say all the time, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Healthcare, especially, is a very complicated space. And there are experts in every area, every time you turn around. And if you really think about it, even when you’re an expert in one thing, you know 0.1 percent of what’s going on in healthcare as a whole. So, there are many, many specialists, people that like this is their one focus, and this is what they do, and they’re the best at it. But they need help from a thousand other people to make what they do possible.
Will Chilvers: And I think that understanding that if you’re a specialist, it’s critical. And if you’re not a specialist and you’re a real kind of jack of all trades – like I consider myself to be, or jack of many trades, certainly not all trades – understanding how all those pieces go together is very important. So, it’s really good to get that exposure and see how all the pieces play together. It’s critical in terms of your ability to build a team and make things happen, make those better, better, better a little bit better today than yesterday changes, knowing who to call and when. And then, that goes back to the relationships and just how critical they are.
Will Chilvers: I often share with my leaders when they come to me and they’re like, I just don’t understand why this person won’t do their job. And I tell them all the time, there’s a lot going on in this place. I guarantee you they’re doing their job, but they might not be doing their job for you. And so, the question you need to be asking is not me, why won’t this person do their job? It’s why aren’t they doing their job for you? And so, knowing who to call and when, and making sure that you have that relationship with that person such that when you pick up the phone, or you send them a text, or you send them an email, or you hit them up on Messenger, or whatever media it is that you choose to use, or Skype, there’s so many of them, that they respond and they want to help you.
Will Chilvers: Because a lot of that is they know that you’re just trying to do the right thing. You’re just trying to be a good person. You’re trying to get healthcare. You’re trying to take care of a patient. And having that conversation with them to let them know that you care, and you understand that they’re busy, and they got a million other things going on, but this is what you’re trying to accomplish, can they help you is very critical in being successful, I think, in any environment, really, but certainly in our world, it’s very key.
Daniel Fortes: It’s very human intensive, so you have to be good with humans.
Stone Payton: Well, gentlemen, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast this morning. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, and your generous spirit. You guys have been very generous with your experience. And the work you guys are doing is so important, and we sure appreciate you.
Will Chilvers: Thank you. Pleasure being here.
Daniel Fortes: Appreciate it. Thanks for having us.
Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guests today, Will Chilvers and Dan Fortes, and everyone here at the Business RadioX family, saying we’ll see you again on High Velocity Careers.
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