Western Washington Medical Group Chief Operation Officer Joe Smecker, who was recently recognized by The Puget Sound Business Journal as a 40 Under 40 executive, discusses the myriad challenges facing the health care industry. He also reflects on his path to COO, and how the Master of Health Administration (MHA) program laid the groundwork for leadership and strategic thinking.
Joe Smecker graduated with a degree in business and quickly landed a finance job on the East Coast. But he found the work unsatisfying, and at the age of 22, he made a radical life change.
“Some friends and I decided to hop in a car and drive west, and we ended up in Seattle,” he recalls.
He fell in love with the ocean and forests, and was determined to settle here. Smecker wound up pursuing an MHA at UW for personal as well as professional reasons, he explained to the Puget Sound Business Journal.
“Born with a heart condition, I had multiple hospital stays as an infant, including a life-saving open-heart surgery. I received consistent, dedicated care from the same pediatric cardiologist throughout my childhood, undergoing another open-heart surgery at 19. The experience instilled in me a deep appreciation for life and an admiration for health care professionals, shaping my commitment to work with and for physicians to enable them to provide the best care possible to individuals and the community.”
Now, years later, his drive and hard work have paid off. 11 years after he got his start at WWMG managing their cardiology practice, he’s now their Chief Operating Officer. Recently, the Puget Sound Business Journal honored Smecker, along with fellow MHA graduate Denise Bowman, with the “40 Under 40 Award” for business executives. Smecker credits the MHA program with teaching him how to navigate the myriad financial and operational challenges within the health care industry.
“The program helped me to really double down on leadership development. Learning not just how to supervise and manage people, but how to lead, is crucial to my role now as a COO in an organization with roughly 500 employees,” he explained.
UW also connected him with mentors who had extensive management careers of their own, and imparted lessons about strategic thinking. He’s stayed in contact with those mentors over the years.
Team-building was another key element of the program. “For all of our classes, whether it was operations or finance or leadership building, it was always working with the same team. That practical experience of how to navigate team dynamics was a huge value-add to my career,” Smecker reflected.
Navigating Adversity in the Health Care Field
The curricula helped prepare him for the trickiest parts of his role at WWMG. Smecker notes that health care faces many obstacles today, from mounting cybersecurity attacks to COVID-related upheaval. In his interview with the PSBJ, he cited the switch over to a new electronic monitoring system as perhaps the most vexing challenge of his career.
Health care is also facing increasing consolidation fueled by Wall Street, making it harder for independent, smaller companies like WWMG to compete. Within this landscape, smart, strategic thinking becomes critical, said Smecker.
But clients aren’t just data points, they’re individuals concerned with their own well-being. A health care executive must keep in mind the stories behind the numbers on their spreadsheet, too.
Smecker explained, “Health care is unique, because you have to do everything at a population level. We see 125,000 unique individuals through this organization at one of our touch points, but every interaction matters. Every appointment that they have is a care plan, and with that comes individual finances and emotions, different payer mixes and contracting with all the different commercial insurances and government payers, [while] staying on top of compliance.”
Nonetheless, Smecker has advice for enterprising health care executives. Ideas for how to improve an organization can emerge from anywhere, so it’s paramount for executives to be open to feedback. Communication should be a two-way street, he explained.
“The best thing you can do for your team is to be completely transparent about expectations. Expectations should always be twofold: what does the manager expect of each employee, that aligns with the full organization’s goals? And also, what can that employee expect of their manager? As business leaders, we need to be dependable; our employees need to be able to trust that when they have issues or concerns, they’re listened to.”
Since heading west 17 years ago, Smecker has learned numerous lessons about leadership–and he plans to keep on growing and improving as an executive.
“Even after you graduate, you’re never done learning,” he said.