Helping patients on a larger scale: LaTonya Washington

As vice president and chief medical officer of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis, Dr. Latonya Washington has gone from helping “the patient in front of me” to helping improve care for hundreds of patients served by the system. Her Harbert MBA prepared her to move from the clinic to the executive level, caring for people through the business side of medicine.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to the Harbert College of Business podcast with your hosts, Sarah Gascon and Currie Dyess. Today's guest is Dr. LaTonya Washington, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis, Tennessee. She's a graduate of Harbert's physician's executive MBA program.

Sarah Gascon:

Welcome Dr. Washington and War Eagle. It's so great to have you on our show today.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

War Eagle. Thanks for having me.

Sarah:   

You have four degrees and have added numerous other certifications. Why is education so important to you?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

Education is really something that was stressed in my family. I have an interesting story about that because growing up, I have a very large family on my father's side. He has seven brothers and sisters. My grandfather had multiple brothers and sisters as well. So my grandfather was uneducated. He had essentially probably a junior high school level education, but his brother actually was the first African-American to get a PhD in the state of Mississippi. And he went on to be the president of Alcorn State University for 25 years. So part of that story is that my uncle Walter said that he wanted to be able to go to college and get a degree. And so as a concession, my grandfather agreed to stay back home and work so that he would be able to assist him financially when he went to college. And in turn, my uncle Walter stated that he would assist all of the other children and grandchildren with going to college.

And many of them went to Alcorn State University where they received their degrees. My father is a graduate and also my mother is a graduate, that's actually where they met. So, that's a really story. And then also that same uncle, after he retired as the president of Alcorn State University, I was in college at the time, not wanting to date myself, but during a time where everyone didn't have a laptop, the internet was really kind of just getting started, and I was working on papers for college. And he calls me up one day and says, "Hey, come pick me up. We're going to go and buy you a computer." We went and got a computer, we went back to my dorm room, we set it up. So I had a brand new computer and printer on campus and I probably had the only computer on campus outside of the library and like the research labs. And so I was very grateful for that. So he really stressed education being something that can't be taken from you and that if you work hard, that you'll be able to achieve your goals.

Currie Dyess:    

Obviously you have your MD and could easily make a career without another degree. Why after all of that hard work, why did you decide to pursue your executive MBA?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

MBA was something I had interest in for a while. My parents are business owners. They owned multiple businesses when I was growing up, so I had access to entrepreneurship. That was something that drew me. However, once I got into healthcare, then I started to see that not only was it important that I cared for patients, but I also saw that hospital executives were requesting that I do certain things. I didn't always understand the reason behind that. And so I really wanted to know more about the business aspect of medicine. And then after that time, I also started the MBA because I said that maybe one day I want to start my own practice, but I quickly learned that that wasn't what I wanted to do. And so probably after about my first week or two at Auburn, then I decided that I wanted to become a hospital executive.

Sarah:   

What are some of the experiences you've taken away from Auburn that have helped you in your career?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

There have been so many. Our MBA cohort, I did the physician executive program. So being able to be amongst fellow physicians in my cohort was really enlightening. I learned so much from them. I think that in addition to the curriculum, I really enjoyed the international component of the curriculum for the MBA at Auburn and being able to learn just a ton of information. Also, we still network. I still communicate with my classmates from Auburn, probably at least about once a week I'll talk to one of them and we explore career opportunities, we do professional growth and development together. There are also other opportunities through the College of Business that have been extended to me. I did do the Green Belt and Six Sigma after graduation. So all of those things have been such value adds for me from attending the Auburn PEMBA program.

Currie:  

You mentioned that you want to be a hospital executive. I would say that's pretty lofty career goals at least for me. Does it in any way concern YOU that you may lose some of that intimate connection you have with your patients as you climb the ladder, and in what ways will you be able to maintain that connection and interaction?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

That's always a concern. From the time that I was five years old, I said that I wanted to be a physician. And that was really the only thing that I've ever said that I wanted to do. So transitioning into a healthcare leadership role, in my current role as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, I don't actually care for patients. I knew that kind of going into the role and it's important for me to really be able to impact health on a larger scale. When I'm caring for patients and taking care of patients in direct patient care, I can affect that patient that's in front of me. I can assist them.

However, in my current role, then I can work on policy changes, procedures that can impact more patients. So the decisions that I make now affect all patients in my hospital, and then even working at our hospital system level, than some of the changes would work in a group to make changes on would affect everyone in our hospital system. And so those are really things that are drivers for me. I know that I can't lie and say that I don't miss direct patient care because I do, maybe not so much now during the time of COVID, but I do miss that direct patient contact sometimes. But just understanding that the things that I'm doing now really affect more patients has been very encouraging to me.

Sarah:   

That must be an interesting position for you from a leadership standpoint too, keeping the doctors and nurses and even administrators motivated and excited for learning and growing, and also helping. That's at the heart of what you all do, helping people. So it must be a challenge as well.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

One of the big things that has been a change is that I think right now we really have to show people that they have value. It's such a challenging time where people are asked to do more than their usual work. We may want them to work more hours or more days or take care of more patients when they're at work. So it's really important that we show our appreciation. And I think that when you have healthcare systems that are really good about showing that appreciation, then you tend to have a more loyal workforce, or at least people want to stay around because they like the culture. And that's one of the things that I can say is a lot different than what I've experienced in the past working in various other healthcare systems. The culture at this facility is really second to none and I've worked at several different healthcare facilities.

When you do things well, they reward you for that. They at least show appreciation for the things that you're doing well. There's a collaborative spirit where we all get together. Like just before we came on to record this podcast, I was kind of moderating a call between our emergency physicians and our hospitalist physicians because there are challenges with getting patients moved through the hospital right now, so from the emergency room up to the floor, to a hospital bed, because the hospitals are so full, and just talking about ways they can collaborate and work together so that the ultimate goal is better care for the patient.

Currie:  

How would a hospital change their culture? It sounds like, based on what you're saying, you reward good behavior and you show appreciation and things like that. That seems like a pretty simple fix. Is it that simple?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

I wish I could say that it was that simple. I must say that the culture of medicine in a way is not like that. When we go through our medical training and if we do things well, we're not often rewarded for that or even shown appreciation. So it's really a bit different to experience it. And so sometimes I can tell when there's a physician who is not used to that or someone who's new to our system and I call them up and say, "Hey, I just want to express my appreciation. You saw that extra patient, or you weren't on call, but you helped us out with this patient." And they're like, "Okay. What's next? What else is it, is that the only reason?"

And even people that I have really great relationships with, one of our medical directors, I was doing this little thing where I kind of show appreciation. I was just giving out a Starbucks gift card where they can get a coffee. And so I called and I said, "Hey, are you in your office?" And she's like, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, I'm going to come over there." And so I walked over there and as soon as I walked in, she was like, "What's wrong?" I was like, "No, this is not that. No, this is different. I was coming to tell you good job. I appreciate everything you're doing. Get a coffee on me."

Currie:  

What do you think is the biggest challenge in healthcare right now?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

The biggest challenge in healthcare right now is really the care delivery. How we deliver care compared to what we did pre-pandemic is completely different. We were used to patients accessing the healthcare system, whether they go to the clinic or go to the emergency department. There wasn't a huge technology presence in healthcare in regards to the patient encounter experience. When we talk about COVID-19 and what it's done for healthcare, it has necessitated that we do things differently. So now telemedicine is much more prominent. You know, we're making access easier for the patients. We're doing drive through COVID testing. You drive through to get a vaccine. And we really did that out of necessity.

We have to remember that everyone now has a smartphone or an iPad or a computer, essentially everyone has one. And so being able to access your healthcare provider in that way to be able to get care is something that I would say five or 10 years down the line, if someone said, "Yeah, you guys will be doing half of your clinic visits in telemedicine," I wouldn't have believed it. I mean, this is healthcare. Some people still carry pagers. So it just takes us a little bit more time to catch on to those technology pieces, the things that we need to move forward with. So COVID has helped us in that aspect.

Sarah:   

So you recently won the 2022 MLK Luminary Award by the city of Memphis and that's for your work in the community. Is that something that you're really passionate about, because it seems like the combination of your education and your experience and your involvement with the community, it seems like you're heavily involved in assisting with helping individuals understand healthcare and their healthcare needs and options for them.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

It was such an amazing honor to be awarded that based on the work that I'd done in the community surrounding COVID-19. One of the things that I feel is really important is really to meet people where they are, working to improve healthcare literacy. In this pandemic, we have been able to see health disparities now more than ever. Memphis is a city that the population is about 56% African-American, and early in the pandemic, really what we were seeing is that individuals were not really adhering to the safety precautions. When I turned on the local news, everyone was talking about COVID-19, telling people the precautions to take, but one of the things that I noticed and a lot of people called me and mentioned as well was that the healthcare professionals that were on the news talking about COVID-19 didn't look like us, didn't look like most of the people who live in the city of Memphis.

And knowing that, it really made me take the initiative to reach out to some of the public health professionals I serve as the President of the Bluff City Medical Society, which is an organization of African-American physicians here in the city of Memphis. And in that role, a lot of the city leadership reached out to me and said, "Hey, Dr. Washington, would you be interested in doing some segments on our local news, some radio shows, some webinars?" And I said, "Absolutely." I want to be able to meet people where they are to talk to them about COVID, help them to understand, and then once we had the vaccine, really talk to them more about vaccinations, the importance of vaccinations, helping to dispel these myths about vaccination, and helping people to be more comfortable.

One of the things that I did early on was, when the COVID vaccine first became available, I like videoed myself getting the COVID vaccine and then did daily check-ins for a week on social media to say, "Hey, I don't have an extra arm. I'm doing okay." And then checking in even after that. So after the first two doses of the COVID vaccine, I did that. And a lot of people said, "You did well so that changed my mind. I decided to get vaccinated because of what you did." And to me, that's what that MLK Luminary Award was all about, meeting people where they are, talking to them about the importance of taking control of your health, and making sure you're doing the things that are appropriate to keep you and your family safe. And the other individuals that were honored during that awards program were all healthcare professionals or in some way involved with healthcare in the COVID-19 pandemic effort in the city of Memphis.

Sarah:   

I'm sure you also probably really inspired a lot of kids to get involved in their own healthcare, and maybe even become doctors.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

I hope so. That's something that I really enjoy doing as well. I do a lot of mentorship, really accessing the community. People call me all the time and say, "Hey, will you be interested in talking to my daughter, my son, my niece?" "Okay, sure. We can have a conversation." And my main goal there is to encourage. You know, a lot of people don't see physicians that look like them and just seeing somebody that shows them that they can actually be successful and to be encouraging.

I had one of my mentees actually text me earlier this week and said, "Hey, I just want to let you know I got a medical school interview at this school and it's my top choice." And I was like, "Okay, congratulations. I'm excited." I was like, "Just call me back when you get your acceptance." And this is a young lady who had really been working to get into medical school. She didn't get in last year and she's gotten one acceptance already this year. And I was like, "Okay, congratulations. You're going somewhere. You're about to be a doctor." But again, for her to be able to get that top choice, I'm just waiting on the day that she'll tell me that she got in her top choice for medical school.

Currie:  

Such a wonderful story and speaks volumes about your passion for the people around you. Outside of your family, who have been some of the mentors that have helped you along your career path and how did you find them and how would one of our listeners go about finding someone that could help them?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

Mentorship is so important and I would really say it's part of the key to success of individuals, particularly in medicine. It's so important to have access to physicians to be able to do shadowing or research. So one of the things that I did when I was in college was, first of all, everyone knew what I wanted to do, that I wanted to be a physician. And so I would take on additional tasks, do research so I would be able to be involved with those physicians and then work on shadowing them when I had free time. So this is in addition to my usual coursework.

Then once I got into medical school, one of the really key organizations with focusing on mentorship was the Bluff City Medical Society, which is the organization that I'm president of currently. This organization set us up with physicians in the community who are African-American physicians to mentor us along our medical school journey. So that was whether we had questions about our coursework, if we just wanted to know what was a good restaurant or where we can go get our hair done, or any type of service that we needed in town, or just someone to talk to and vent about challenging times or any challenging situations that you're having at school.

Those relationships were invaluable for me. And so I really feel like right now I'm kind of in a full circle moment in that those physicians who mentored me, now I am leading this organization and it's really been a joy. Since that time, since I've become president of the Bluff City Medical Society and I do believe in mentorship so much, we've actually formalized our mentorship program. When I had a mentor through the Bluff City Medical Society, it was more of an informal type of relationship.

And so now we assign the mentors. We also do additional learning modules where we talk about those soft skills that often you don't learn, or you learn by experience, like financial planning, racism and bias training, mental health and wellbeing, and then even like career coaching, career planning, all of those things that are really, really important. And what we have to realize is that a lot of our students of color may not have access to those resources outside because they may not know anyone else in their family that's a physician or have any family friends who are physicians. So we are really wanting to set them up for success.

Currie:  

Shifting gears just a little bit, after reading the blogs on your website and looking through your LinkedIn, it's clear you have a tremendous passion for health equity, health education, and correcting implicit biases in healthcare. Does that ever seem like a daunting task and how do you maintain the fire that it takes to make such monumental change?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

Health equity, implicit bias, medical racism, of course, is a daunting task. You do what you can. You continue to push the efforts forward to the point where you get tired, then you take a break and you hope that you have a group of colleagues that are able to continue pushing while you rest. And then you get rejuvenated and you come right back into it. There are a number of things that I've learned over the years and really experiencing medical racism and implicit bias in healthcare firsthand really. My father had to receive medical care, and here we are, I and both my sisters are physicians, and just some of the experiences that he had in the healthcare system was really eye-opening. And understanding that the treatment that he received would not have been such had his skin color have been different. And really being in the place to be able to advocate for him and having enough knowledge to know that the care that he received was not what we would consider to be standard really changed my mind about medicine.

I felt in many ways like medicine had betrayed me, but I think also in many ways, it really lit my fire even more to make sure that these types of things don't continue to happen to other patients of color or patients of lower socioeconomic status. You know, injustices in healthcare, it just seems like that shouldn't be the case, but we know that based on history that it has occurred for many years. And so we can't expect to just flip a switch and for it to not be that way anymore. Just learning about the history is so important.

I'll tell you about one of the books that is in my repertoire, Medical Racism by Harriet Washington. She's of no relation, but if she wanted to claim being my cousin, I would surely allow her to do that. I'd be honored. But the way that she writes this book about the bias and racism that has been within healthcare from its very inception, from the very beginning of this country, you can see why there are people who have a lot of mistrust in medicine. And just being a physician of color, I also have to say that I can't just walk in the room and expect people to say, "Oh, because you look like me, I know that you're going to take good care of me," because that's also not something that we can assume. Trust is something that has to be built. You have to dismantle the mistrust and so that you can build that trust.

And so that's really one of the things that I feel is really, really important in communities of color and really just helping to educate people. For people who've had an opportunity to listen to our podcast, we talk about these medical conditions in layman's terms. We open up our email inboxes and say, "Hey, email us questions." On our social media pages we openly answer questions. So all of those things are very important as we continue to work to move the needle on health equity.

There's also a project that I'm involved in currently through the ACGME, which is graduate medical education that's called Equity Matters. And what Equity Matters is, is really anti-racism training that the hopes would be that it would be able to roll out to every medical education program in the country to help to train our new physicians on racism and bias, help them to identify it, and then help to actively dismantle it.

I mean, we all have biases. We are born in this country. We watch TV, we listen to the radio. We were raised how our parents raised us. How they treat others, it's often time how we treat others as well. So working to identify those things and identify that, "Okay, this may be a misconception that I have about this particular people group." And once you identify it and work to actively dismantle those thought processes and really work to achieve equitable healthcare for everyone.

Sarah:   

Yeah. You have such a remarkable story. We read your website, your blogs, you have, like you said, a podcast. You have it with your sisters, Doctors Washington, a great podcast. How else can our listeners get in touch with you, follow your story, even maybe get involved with you within the community if they're in Memphis?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

One of the best ways to get in contact with me is on my website. It's drlatonyawashington.com. I am also very active on LinkedIn and on other social medias, not as much, but that's really the easiest way to get in contact with me is via my website. You can click on the contact us and you'll be able to get in touch with me. As far as our podcast, the Doctors Washington podcast, our podcast is available on Apple podcast, Spotify and Amazon music. Really what that podcast is, was a way for us to stop repeating ourselves in essence. We didn't have to tell our stories over and over again. So we recorded it in three segments. There's one section called The Story where we talk about our lives and why we decided to become physicians. We talk a little bit about our family in the story section.

And then we have a section called The Plug. The Plug is all about how to get into med school, what to do when you get into med school, how to get into residency, what to do when you get into residency. And then we have another section called The Focus, and in The Focus section, that's where we talk about all the healthcare topics. We get questions about everything. Of course, COVID. We get tons of questions about COVID, but diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, any number of things. We've talked about a little bit of everything. And sometimes we have special guests. We reach out to our colleagues in the medical community to talk to us about special focused things, like we've had neurologists, psychologists, surgeons on with us, and it's really been a joy to be able to produce that and to highlight those topics for our community.

Sarah:   

How does your family have three daughters and they all become doctors?

Currie:  

Yeah, are you just a doctor because you got to keep up?

Sarah:   

Yeah.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

Well, I'm the oldest so they're keeping up with me. Let's start there. I was the first.

Sarah:   

Yeah. You are.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

So really I'll say that I've always known that I wanted to be a physician. There was nothing else that I said that I really wanted to do and so really working towards that goal and achieving that goal. I say that my sisters copied off me, but they would say something different. You do have to listen in to our first season of the podcast under The Story. They talk a little bit about their stories and why they decided to go into medicine. But my middle sister, she is a general surgeon. She is currently in the Portland, Oregon area doing some additional subspecialty training in surgery. And then my youngest sister is a nephrologist, or a kidney doctor, and she is in Mississippi practicing medicine. So I think they copied off me. They made up some reason saying why they became doctors and didn't copy me, but you know.

Sarah:   

I love that you have such a great relationship and can talk freely like this with your sisters and your family.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

Yeah, we have a good time. I mean, we make jokes and everything too, but yeah, we have a good time together. We have a good relationship.

Currie:  

I love your leadership and your compassion. Do your sisters also share that?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

They do actually. Yeah. I think that's one of the common things for us. Now I will say that the podcast was kind of my idea and I drug them along for the ride, but now they're enjoying it. We're literally thinking about what we're going to do for our next season and how we're going to revamp things to make it more useful and to grow our following. And they're also really involved with medical education, with mentorship, with scholarship, all of those things.

Sarah:   

Do they win as many awards as you?

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

Well, no. Not yet at least. Not yet. They're pretty early in their careers, so I definitely think that it's going to come.

Currie:  

Dr. Washington, it has been an absolute pleasure. We can't thank you enough for joining us on the Harbert podcast. I know our listeners are going to take tons of information from this and it's going to help them along their journey and with their lives.

Sarah:   

Well, Dr. Washington, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time and War Eagle.

Dr. LaTonya Washington:

War Eagle. Thanks for having me.

Narrator:

Harbert, inspiring business.