question :

How is pam Soine's job different from what you

would have expected of someone with a marketing

degree?

podcast interview transcript

Rasmussen: "Welcome to another episode of Accounting in Action My name is Stephanie

Rasmussen, and I am an Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Texas at

Arlington Today I'm joined by Pam Soine, who is a Senior Contract Process Executive at a large

company in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Now, due to nondisclosure agreements with her

company's clients, we're not going to name what company Pam works for. But I can tell you that

it's a national health care performance improvement company. So Pam, thanks for joining me.

Soine: "Thanks!"

Rasmussen: "I expect that many of our listeners are not familiar with what you mean by a health

care performance improvement company. Can you tell us a little bit about what your company

Hoes?"

Soine: "Yeah, so we really work to help hospitals save money and to improve quality outcomes

across the board. Specifically the area that I work in is in a sourcing department, so I work with

the national group purchasing organization, where we go out and we contact on behalf of

hospitals across the country for really anything they potentially could purchase. So when you

think of hospitals and their expenses, most people first think of medical surgical supplies like

band-aids and catheters, and we contract for those. We also contract for pharmaceuticals for

labor, services, I mean, even things such as pest control and snow removal depending on what area of the country you're in. So, pretty much anything a hospital spends money on, we contract

for "

Rasmussen: "And, are companies hiring your company to do this work for them because they

don't want to do this type of purchasing on their own or contract negotiation? What are the

reasons they would hire vou?"

Soine: "Well, sometimes it's exactly that, they don't want to do it. Sometimes they aren't staffed.

Often times it's because we're experts in contracting, and we can not only aggregate all of our

spends; I mean when you think of all the hospitals across the country, they use our services. We

put all of their spend together when we go out to contract. So if you're a 50-bed hospital or if

you're a 500-bed hospital, ultimately you're all going to be accessing the same contract in the

end. So the smaller players can get much better prices. We're also experts in contracting, and we

have a really great legal team. So one of the draws for many hospitals is getting our terms and

conditions that are really aggressive top-of-the-line terms and conditions for the hospital."

T

Rasmussen: "And does your company actually then place the purchase orders with these

companies, or are you just there to negotiate the contracts?"

Soine: "Yeah, we don't actually buy anything, so we negotiate the contracts and then the

hospitals are able to access those contracts. But We don't do any purchasing on their behalf."

Rasmussen: "Okay. So Pam, can you tell us a little bit about your educational background and

your work history?"

Soine: "Sure. I have a bachelor's in Marketing and a master's in Business Administration, and my

first job out of college was at the Medical College of Virginia, where I worked in purchasing.

That was my first job, I was new to health care, I was new to purchasing, I didn't reallv know What I was doing. It's where I got my feet wet and learned every thing that I could. After that, I

moved to Colorado and I worked for two different large health systems there doing value

analysis, which is really where we break down the cost per case and really the value that an item

or a surgeon or a doctor is bringing to the health care facility.

Rasmussen:

"And you said you have an undergraduate in Marketing and an MBA. What led you

to pursue an MBA?"

Soine: "Well, when I graduated, the economy was really really poor, so I didn't want to enter the

job market. So I finished with my undergrad and knew I was going to have a tough time getting a

job. So I decided to go to grad school to try to extend that time a little bit, hoping that the

economy would pick up. And that's really why I went to grad school."

Rasmussen: "Okay. And with the career you ended up in, do you find that a lot of people you

work with have master's degrees, or is it a mix of people with both undergrads and master's?"

Joine: "In my position, most people have master's degrees. You're pretty hard pressed to find

someone who doesn't in my position We do have other lower level jobs throughout our

organization where people don't necessarily have to have a master's degree, but most people do.

Rasmussen: "Okay. Well I want to talk a little bit about something you mentioned when you

were describing some of your work experiences, and that was the value analysis. That sounds

like something where you're using accounting information to do your job. So could you describe

that a little more to us?"

Soine: "Sure. And I did value analysis pretty heavily when I worked at hospitals, That was reallv

my full-time role at two of the organizations where I worked. So we would look at... I'll give an

example of a surgeon. We might look at surgical cases for appendectomies, and we would look at every surgeon in our facility who did that procedure, and we would see what it costs from a

supply standpoint for each surgeon to do the procedure. Now, when you're looking at surgeries.

some doctors just see sicker patients, so those who were more specialized cases or they were

sicker. We would cut those out to try to keep things neutral. But maybe we would look at

laparoscopic procedures for those non-really sick patients, and lower acuity across the board, and

we would break down every single supply that each surgeon used in their case. And then we

would rate those surgeons on who was the most cost-effective and who was the least cost-

effective surgeon because ultimately the hospital has a budget to meet, and if we have a surgeon

who's costing us money or, you know, unnecessarily wasting products, we want to try to nip that

in the bud as soon as possible."

Rasmussen: "And did you publish or communicate that cost information to the surgeons?"

Soine: "We did. We would usually do it as a red-yellow-green chart that we would post. Often

times, people can be very competitive with one another, so sometimes it worked for our benefit,

but if a surgeon was the only one in his practice in the red, he or she may not want to be in the

red. It might entice them to be less costly with the supplies that they used. So we did publish.

Rasmussen: "Did you ever find with that type of analysis where you would help the surgeons,

maybe, make decisions about supplies they maybe are bringing into the operating room but don't

actually need, and might be able to find ways to help them save money if they're not really

willing to change their behavior on their own?"

Soine: "We did Often times, I would watch cases, so I would watch different surgical

procedures and see what was wasted. So if we had a specific surgeon who wasted several items

every single case, we would then approach that doctor and say. "Hey. You throw these away out of your kit every single time. Can we just remove them from your kit and not pay for them going

forward?", and in most cases the doctors were very willing to do so."

Rasmussen: "So from what you've described, you were doing a lot of this work to find ways to

help reduce costs or make people aware of the costs that were being incurred. Did this analysis

ever have a use in terms of determining prices for the services that were performed in the

hospital?"

Soine: "Not necessarily prices because in health care often times reimbursement is preset by

insurance companies and by the federal government. So it wasn't really impacting what the

hospital charged. It was more helping to improve the bottom line for the hospital so they could

see some profit."

Rasmussen: "Okay, good. Now thinking back to when you graduated from college, did you

expect to use this cost information regularly in your work or accounting information?"

Soine: "Absolutely not. I did not expect to. I was a Marketing major and I didn't think I would be

floing anything like this."

Rasmussen: "So, do you remember your accounting classes, and if so, what were your

perceptions of them at the time?"

Soine: "I do remember them, and honestly they were some of my least favorite classes. So I was

more Marketing and Management-driven and not so much Finance and Accounting. And frankly

when I was thinking about marketing. I couldn't really find a way that I thought I would apply

any of the accounting information that I learned to what I would be doing in a future job."Rasmussen: "Is your perspective different now? Would you do things differently if you were a

college student today?"

Soine: "I would. I definitely would have paid much closer attention in my accounting and

finance classes because I've ended up using it much much more than I could have ever

expected."

Rasmussen: "Well, this podcast is most likely going to be listened to by both undergraduate and

MBA students, so do you have any advice for those students?"

Soine: "I would say for undergraduate students, I would recommend taking lots of different

classes. So I was very marketing-driven and I took lots and lots of marketing classes, even above

and beyond what I needed for my degree. And now I know that I've been in roles that I probably

could have used, for example, more law classes because I do a lot of negotiation for terms and

conditions, returns and bill terms. So the few law classes I took because they were required have

peen very helptul, but I definitely could have benefited from more of those. So I encourage

undergrads to just take a wide variety of classes. You never know when you're going to need that

knowledge. For MBA students, I would say keep an open mind because when I was working on

my MBA, again, I was still really thinking about marketing and how I was going to use that

business administration knowledge in a marketing type role. And you never know where you're

going to end up, so I would say. MBA students, keep an open mind when you're looking at jobs

in the future, and be ready for anything."

Rasmussen: "Did you have any understanding of the type of job you have now when you were a

student?"