Ann Smith Pic
Ann Smith. Photo by Emily Moseley.
Lexington, KY - From the eighth grade on, Ann Smith was headed for a medical career. She spent that year’s spring break helping her uncle, who sold laboratory supplies in Alabama. When Smith accompanied him to a state convention of medical technologists, her career was set.
Smith’s family moved from Tennessee to Winchester, Ky., when she was in high school. After graduating from George Rogers Clark High School, she earned a bachelor’s degree in medical technology from the University of Kentucky.
Smith’s UK career of 35 years has taken her from a beginning lab technologist in a second-shift hematology lab to chief administrative officer for UK HealthCare. More than once, she has advanced to supervise some of the people who hired her.
She loved working in the lab and had no long-term career plans, she said. When her boss suggested she look at the requirements for some new positions, she told him that she had worked so hard to get through college that she couldn’t imagine going back to school for the graduate degrees required.
“Not everyone chooses to limit themselves,” her boss remarked, quietly suggesting a challenge.
“Six months later, I was back in class,” Smith said. With understanding bosses, she kept working full time while taking a class or two most of the time.
“It took me five years and two babies to finish,” Smith recalled. She earned a masters degree in public administration from UK’s Martin School of Public Policy rather than an MBA because she could arrange a concentration of classes in health care management.
Smith is quick to credit others for her successes.
“I’ve been blessed with mentors — co-workers, bosses, even some people who worked for me were mentors,” she said.
Now Smith is at the forefront of health-care trends and changes as the hospital moves through its multi-year expansion.
Smith and other UK HealthCare executives meet once a week for two hours to learn the tenets of Toyota’s Lean Leadership program. Applying standard work processes and achieving a standard work product in health care mean such things as making sure the first surgical cases start on time each morning.
Local health-care issues and trends are much the same as those on a national level, Smith said. “Reimbursement continues to be refined,” she added. “State budget issues have to be considered. Kentucky is particularly challenged because we’re not a highly populated state.”
For so many people to deal effectively with the many changes of the hospital’s expansion, it helps to “plan, plan, plan, plan, plan,” Smith said. “Seek feedback from as many perspectives as you can get,” she advised.
Then, Smith added, it is essential to provide opportunities to reframe the designs.
“Get down to how you’re going to use it,” she said. “We worked months on plans for how the patients’ beds would be arranged in their rooms.”
About 85 percent of her time is spent in meetings.
“Now it’s 110 percent while we’re working on the budget,” Smith said with a laugh.
Still, she manages to get out of her office and talk to employees and patients’ family members.
Smith has shouldered responsibility for the day-to-day — even hour-to-hour — operations of Chandler and Children’s Hospitals since 2009. Recently she added the operation of Good Samaritan Hospital to this load.
And Smith is not a corporate-suite-only employee.
“I’ve served food in the cafeteria. I’ve done housekeeping,” she explained. And though it has been years since she practiced her well-honed skills as a phlebotomist, she could probably practice a bit and resume the work, she said.
“I could always hit veins on the first stick, even with cancer patients,” she recalled with pride.
She wants to see for herself that the hospital is functioning well, and to hear firsthand both problems and solutions. Her agenda of tasks to complete, situations to check into for her boss Dr. Michael Karpf, papers to read and more rests in two navy blue notebooks that are either on her desk or within her reach.
“I keep many lists, and I like to mark items off,” she said.
She not only expects calls on a 24-7 basis, she welcomes them.
“[Employees] don’t call for trivial reasons,” she said. “When they call, I know they need me or they wouldn’t bother me. It’s always meaningful, not frivolous.”
Managing an increasingly demanding career such as Smith’s is not easy, especially for a woman with children. When their two daughters (now 22 and 25) were young, Smith and her husband, Greg, decided that things would work best for their family if he gave up his business and became “Mr. Mom.”
“I could not do what I do without him,” Smith said. “Now he travels with me on business trips and is involved in other projects.”
For her health and fun, Smith runs in the evenings.
“My daughter got me started in 2000,” she said. “I’ve run five mini-marathons and the Bourbon Chase twice.”
Despite the responsibility and the long hours, it is obvious that Smith, a low-key person who truly listens to other people, enjoys her work.
“I love what I do — not every duty, but the job,” she said. “This is such a strong organization. The staff is so remarkable and they do amazing things. It’s a privilege to work here.”