UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Influencing Larger Health Care Issues: John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow Brandon Scott

 

By Carly Milne

When Brandon Scott (MBA/M.D. ’18) began medical school, his goal wasn’t simply to become a doctor. Scott had already cultivated an awareness of how impactful physicians could be in influencing larger health care issues, and he began his education with the idea that he — and other physicians — could influence and improve patient care delivery.

“My number one career interest is compassion in treating patients,” Scott says. “I went to UCLA to become a doctor, and I believe in treating patients with the idea that they can become familiar with the idea of normalcy — not just healing.”

Scott’s focus is reflected in Connecting Californians to Care, the student-run organization he co-founded with two fellow M.D./MBAs. While their mission is to help create access to care, they’re also dedicated to educating clinicians and administrators in professional development beyond the med school curriculum. It’s passion like this, and a unique way of thinking in the next, that made Scott a great candidate for a 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship.

The Future of Health Care? Numbers Tell the Story

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National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15. UCLA Anderson, in conjunction with the Anderson Latino Management Association and the UCLA campus, recognizes the significant contributions to society among our Latino and Hispanic students, alumni, staff and faculty. Visit [email protected] to enjoy their stories.

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By Paul Feinberg

Integrated Behavioral Health self-describes as a company that specializes in behavioral health plan administration, employee assistance programs, psychological disability management and work-life services. The company works with Fortune 1000 employers, business coalitions, insurance companies, union health plans, HMOs and PPOs.

As corporate controller, Juan Salcedo (’83) is the top finance professional at the company. “I handle monthly reporting, banking and analyzing acquisitions,” he said via phone from the company’s headquarters in Costa Mesa. He also oversees all of the accounting and finance departments.

Salcedo, who did his undergraduate work at Stanford, didn’t enroll at what was then UCLA’s Graduate School of Management with a goal of becoming a corporate controller. His primary objective was to educate himself as to how businesses are run, with a vague notion that someday he’d like to head his own company. While at UCLA, he recognized that his strengths ran more toward finance and analytics as opposed to marketing. He focused on accounting during his last year at Anderson and ended up taking a position with a Big Eight accounting firm.

Strategy Expertise and Insights into Multi-Ethnic Communities Drove California’s Highest Health Care Enrollment

National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15. UCLA Anderson, in conjunction with the Anderson Latino Management Association and the UCLA campus, recognizes the significant contributions to society among our Latino and Hispanic students, alumni, staff and faculty. Visit [email protected] to enjoy their stories.

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By Paul Feinberg

Elvia Delgado (’99) has spent the last 10 years with AltaMed Health Services, the largest, federally qualified community clinic in the country. “Its mission,” Delgado says, “is to provide health services to the underserved and uninsured community.” The organization has served Los Angeles and Orange County for nearly 50 years.

A Pro-Social Imperative

“AltaMed is mission-centric,” Delgado says. “It’s served over 200,000 patients and provided over a million encounters to a population that in many ways has not had access to health care. We provide health care regardless of ability to pay.”

The AltaMed system has 58 locations in Los Angeles and Orange County and provides health care services from birth to end of life, including prenatal, adult medicine, pediatrics, dentistry and behavioral health. It’s physician-based, not an insurance company.

How UCLA Anderson Alumnus Clayton Frech’s Highly “Adaptive” Angel City Sports Took Wing

During Impact Week (April 17–21, 2017), whose theme is Purpose + Profit, UCLA Anderson is highlighting stories of mission-driven careers, companies and projects that fulfill unmet needs in sectors from e-commerce to cleantech.

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By Yamini Mappat (’18)

Clayton Frech (’98) is the founder and CEO of Angel City Sports and the annual Angel City Games (June 22–25, 2017). He was formerly the regional VP of Safelite AutoGlass and VP of operations for Classic Party Rentals. Clayton also serves on the board of Adaptive Sports USA and the L.A. advisory board for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. He was the president of UCLA Anderson’s Los Angeles alumni chapter in the early 2000s and received the inaugural UCLA Anderson Alumni Service Award in 2004. He has also served on the boards of the Literacy Network of Los Angeles, Northeast Trees and Amigos de Los Rios.

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Q. Can you tell us about your organization?

I started Angel City Sports in 2015 to provide adaptive and Paralympic sports programs for children, veterans and adults with physical disabilities. We offer year-round instructional sport clinics in a wide variety of sports, we loan equipment to athletes who otherwise could not participate in sports, and we host one of the largest Paralympic sports competitions in the country, the annual Angel City Games, right here at UCLA!

Q. What was the inspiration behind Angel City Sports?

My now 11-year-old son, Ezra, was born with some physical differences. Despite his disability, has always loved sports.

A Diverse Field Study Team Collaborates in South Africa to Improve Health Outcomes

Eric Flato at HSRC with client lead Dr. Alastair Van Heerden (right)

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem.During Impact Week (April 17–21, 2017), whose theme is Purpose + Profit, we’re highlighting stories of AMRs supported by UCLA Anderson’s Center for Global Management that took UCLA Anderson Class of 2017 teams overseas to collaborate with NGOs whose mission-driven work includes such global challenges as health care delivery, international labor standards and environmental conservation.

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By Joshua Bivins, Sarah Broadbent, Lynn Compton, Eric Flato and Denys Levin, MBA Class of 2017

Our Applied Management Research (AMR) field study project entailed working with the Human Sciences Research Council to develop a sustainable non-communicable disease (NCD) screening model in the South African community of Sweetwaters, located in Kwazula-Natal province. The goal of the service is to improve community health outcomes. Our team selected this project because it would give us the chance to benefit the wider global community and broaden our understanding of the impact space. Team members’ backgrounds ranged from registered nurse to renewable energy development, so each member was able to bring a unique perspective to this project.

Working with a client and community located halfway around the world from Los Angeles required our team to travel to South Africa through multiple, staggered trips to conduct primary research. The first trip kicked off with Denys and Sarah spending just over a week in the country in November. The second trip consisted of Lynn and Eric continuing primary research, with one week in the community. Finally, Joshua visited the community on a third and final week-long trip to wrap up any conversations and loose ends. The purpose of these trips was to get a sense of how the community operated, how health care was delivered and who the major stakeholders were in order to help us develop empathy for community members (who were our target customer base) and for their challenges accessing and prioritizing health care.

Unhappiness Should Never Be a Way of Life

By Sana Rahim (FEMBA ’19)

When you graduate from college wide-eyed and ready to take on the world, no one ever tells you that one day your career choices will be dictated by a mortgage or daycare payments. Whether we realize it or not, at some point in our lives we are forced to make decisions about our priorities, and sometimes career fulfillment is put at the bottom of the list. We are forced to choose between work that matters to us and work that will pay us what we need to survive. A dream career is not only hard to find, but sometimes it’s simply not feasible.

From a young age, we are taught to follow our dreams and pursue our passions. We are not taught, however, that sometimes our dreams will be put on hold to support our parents, to pay off our student debt or to prepare for future plans of buying a home or bringing a child into the world. Sometimes it feels impossible to find a job that is able to support your financial goals as well as your intellectual and emotional needs for growth and fulfillment.

A Stellar Lineup Will Ask — and Answer — Questions about the Future of Health Care in California

All students registered for the third annual UCLA Anderson Healthcare Conference on Saturday, March 11, will be invited to a pre-conference networking night on campus on Friday, March 10, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. The evening will feature a senior executive keynote speaker from conference sponsor Blue Shield of California. Cocktails and snacks will be served.

REGISTER NOW

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By Harshita Mishra (’18)

The “health care industry” impacts us all. It is an industry that intersects with technology, law, economics, government and countless other sectors. In the United States alone, the health care industry is worth more than $3 trillion.

How can California, the most populous and diverse state in the U.S., serve as the model for value, innovation and collaboration in health care? How will the changing political climate impact the Affordable Care Act? What are California’s strengths to face the upcoming challenges? What should you as a future global leader know, and why?

These questions intrigue and excite me. That’s why I’m attending the third annual UCLA Anderson Healthcare Conference, whose theme this year is Caring for California: Visions of Value, Innovation and Collaboration.

UCLA Distinguished Professor Chris Tang Recognized for Analytical Research on Health Care Reimbursement Schemes

By Elise Anderson

Christopher Tang, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Decisions, Operations and Technology Management and the Edward W. Carter Chair in Business Administration, and his co-authors recently received an honorable mention for their paper titled “The Impact of Reimbursement Policy on Patient Welfare, Readmission Rate and Waiting Time in a Public Healthcare System: Fee-for-Service vs. Bundled Payment.”

The best paper competition was sponsored by the China Business Initiative of the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia University. The awards were presented at the recent annual Conference of Chinese Scholars Association for Management Science and Engineering (CSAMSE). The theme of the 2016 CSAMSE, Internet Plus and Scientific Management, reflects a desire to focus on the new challenges for the management practice of the traditional industries in the background of internet and mobile social networks, and the corresponding data-driven management techniques and tools. Scholars in MSE from around the world were invited to present their research at the conference.

Kenichi Nogami Brings Pioneering Technology to Market

Former investment banker Kenichi Nogami (’17) embraced the Business Creation Option at UCLA Anderson because he wanted to bring vital medical technology to market. He says he chose Anderson because of its location in a region of cutting-edge medical technology and a culture of shared success that sets it apart from other b-schools.

Q: Tell us about your startup, Metcela.

Metcela is a pioneer biotechnology company founded in Japan in March 2016 that aims to be the first to commercialize biological products that heal damaged heart muscle in order to treat heart diseases. The product can save patients’ lives by preventing risky and expensive heart transplants, which can cost up to $787,000.

I co-founded the company with my partner, Takahiro Iwamiya, an experienced stem cell researcher in Japan, while getting support from UCLA Anderson classmates.

Q: What inspired you, and how did your education and experience prepare you to launch your own venture?

Before coming to UCLA Anderson, I was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in Japan and I executed financing and M&A deals for major Japanese companies. But I had entrepreneurial aspirations in my mind since college. In January 2014, while I was still at Morgan Stanley, I met Takahiro and, after several meetings, we decided to work together to launch a business from his technology. However, as a former investment banker, I had no clue about the steps of launching the business and what strategy we should take. I decided to apply to business schools to learn more about entrepreneurship while Takahiro worked on R&D and prototyping for a couple of years. Anderson resources really helped me in creating convincing business plans and presenting them to investors. Capitalizing on all the learnings here, we could convince one key venture capitalist in Japan and actually launch the company.

Q: Describe disruption and innovation in the medical space. What differences have you noticed between Asia and the U.S.?

The Japanese government is provding a lot of grants to researchers and companies in the field of stem cell research. In addition, the government also enforced a new law to reduce difficulty of stem cell clinical trials and promote commercializing stem cell treatment. Taking advantage of this support, Metcela received a grant from the government in May and we located our first lab in the stem cell-focused research center developed under a prefectural project, starting June 1.

UCLA Anderson Field Study Team Helps Global NGO Solve Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Problems in India

Daniel Brugger and Mick Pathompakawant (first and second from left), together with representatives from ActionIndia (fourth from left) and WaterAid India (fifth from left), interviewed local community members in Delhi about sanitation problems in their neighborhood 

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By Catherine Chen (’16), Daniel Bruggers (’16), Lindsee Redmond (’16), Mick Pathompakawant (’16), Yusuke Matsuoka (’16)

WaterAid India (WAI), our client for our Applied Management Research field study project, is a nonprofit organization operating since 1986. WAI is recognized as a key player in the WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) sector. It offers three main services beyond overall water safety and hygiene awareness:

• Create greater infrastructure for potable water access;
• Reduce open-air defecation by increasing toilet availability;
• Provide feminine hygiene products to India’s women and girls.

WAI has finalized its strategic plan for the period 2016–2021. The organization is currently interested in customizing its strategic and operational plans to penetrate into Rajasthan state, but a scoping study is needed to review WAI’s entry and engagement there. The goal of our project is to determine the most effective approach for WAI to initiate its presence in Rajasthan and operate within the terms of improving the WASH situation there.