My first several years of school were at an American military base in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. My father was a Cold War spy. And while I share his patriotism, and the Mormon faith of both my parents; my mother, who is from Mexico, has been the most influential in terms of my emotional and intellectual development. Thus, when I did my missionary service, I worked exclusively among the Hispanic population of Idaho, the most formative two years of my young adulthood. I am applying to your program because I want to devote my professional life to the enhancement of hospital administration in areas of America that are predominantly Hispanic. My great-grandparents in Michoacán, Mexico, lived to be 103 and 105 eating rice and beans and dying of simple old age rather than heart disease or cancer. This is a treasured part of my legacy and also an expression of my religious faith: making one´s body a temple for the Lord. I want to attend Loma Linda for two reasons, because of the ethos of your singularly important religious heritage—strict codes of conduct and mandatory religious classes—and because you offer an MBA in Health Care Administration rather than an indirect route through the MPH. Furthermore, I spoke with Dr XXXX and he explained to me how you have small classes of only about 22 students with everyone learning from each other, working as a team. He also indicated that your program collaborates with medical schools and hospitals where MBA students are assigned work positions within their field. In this way, students are able to land a job immediately upon graduating.
My education at XXXX University has prepared me well to contribute to the mission and success of your program. My classes have given me a thorough preparation in accounting, finance, and management principles and practices, and my calculus and statistic courses have provided me with knowledge and experience that will enable me to excel in an environment that demands rigorous analytical and quantitative skills along with precision attention to detail. I am familiar with Microsoft Office suite, STATA, SAS, and Mathematica programming. My well developed fluency in Spanish is central to my unique professional goals, for both the short and long term. My interaction with Hispanic populations over the past several years has included volunteering, translating, and mentoring in various capacities in and out of hospital settings. I have cultivated a profound and passionate interest in these populations and my love and respect for their culture has motivated me to pursue a MBA degree in health care administration so that I can spend the balance of my professional life improving the health care systems that serve America´s Hispanic communities. I hope to play major, critically important roles in the study and implementation of new health care policies that will be designed to better understand, serve, and accommodate the needs of America´s Hispanic community.
I was a volunteer with Big Brother Big Sister Foundation where I served as a big brother for a Hispanic boy from an impoverished family. I have also been active with the Eagle Scouts, helping them to revamp our community park. I have served as a mentor in a program put on by Stanford University for underprivileged Hispanic students. And I have also volunteered with the United Way along with serving a 2 year volunteer proselyte mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to the Hispanic communities in XXXX Idaho. My most relevant experience, however, was working for 3.5 years for a company that contracted with hospitals to do manage revenue cycles. We helped self pay patients get on government funded programs on both state and federal levels. These experiences have helped me to better understand the needs of a growing population of self pay patients with no insurance and very little means of paying for much needed medical services. I have become highly familiar with how Medicare and Medicaid work and I am very much engrossed by my study of the changes taking place with the new health care bill that has been passed by Congress.
In some important ways, my experience and independent investigations have helped me to be able to stay one step ahead of politicians and policy makers who have designed the health care bill. I am able to foresee flaws and cracks in the system and very much look forward to becoming part of our struggle to overcome the many obstacles that stand in the way of an effective and efficient implementation of the bill’s directives. I feel strongly that, with my background working in hospital settings with patients who have no insurance or are under insured has given me a valuable edge for understanding the importance of revamping revenue cycle management in community hospitals. I especially look forward to researching new ways of running hospitals more efficiently in Southern California where there are large populations of Hispanic patients.
I have experience working with 10 hospitals nationwide and have seen how other hospitals are able to manage as well. I look forward to becoming an Executive Administrator of a hospital that caters to a large Hispanic population and find new ways to cut costs, balance deficits, and even create a surplus. My dream is to join a hospital that is struggling fiscally and with low levels of performance and turn it around into a top notch hospital where all patients can be assured that they will get top notch care at an affordable price.
