A Tale of Two Disciplines

APRIL 14, 2025

Introduction

For several years, a fellow-professor at Texas State and I wrote columns for a few healthcare-related journals. It was an opportunity to put my thoughts in writing and have those thoughts challenged by my co-author and the readers. This constant challenge reinforced my beliefs and sometimes changed them. My teaching college students for over 40 years also challenged me to find new ways to teach difficult material.

My interest in healthcare administration started when I had a part-time job at Lubbock Medical Center during my undergraduate years at Texas Tech University. The hospital administrator convinced me to pursue a hospital administration graduate degree at The George Washington University rather than a law degree. I learned a lot from the faculty and my roommates while in Washington, D.C. and then from the executive team during my administrative residency at the Hutzel Hospital in Detroit. My first “real job” was working at Valley Medical Center of Fresno. In Fresno, I started teaching part-time in an external degree program in health administration for St. Mary’s College in Moraga.

After two successful years in Fresno, I joined the Humana corporate office in 1979 as process manager working on process improvement and quality assurance at the department level in the company’s 100 hospitals. Process Management also had responsibilities for accreditation, identifying preferred vendors, and capital expenditure requests. In Louisville, I started teaching part-time at Webster University in Jeffersonville, Indiana. In 1985, I left Humana and enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Kentucky to pursue college teaching full-time.

After completing the coursework for my doctorate, I started teaching at Texas State University where I finished my dissertation and earned my board certification in both healthcare management and healthcare financial management. I taught seminars for both the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Writing books came next with books in healthcare accounting, healthcare financial management, and more recently an edition of managing healthcare organizations co-authored with Kurt Darr. After going through the professorial ranks and several stints in academic administration, I retired from Texas State in 2024 after 38 years.

This blog will be a platform where I can share my thoughts on both healthcare administration and higher education. I hope my efforts will produce a dialogue.