In his position, Davis Acker advises senior medical center leaders at Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s (VUMC’s) adult, psychiatric, and rehab hospitals on dynamic system market strategies across multiple clinical service lines. Though he has filled that role since 2022, he was aware of the gaps in his preparation.

“Having been a liberal arts student in college,” says Davis, who earned an undergraduate degree in history and a master’s degree in urban history, “I did not receive any formal business training. I’ve learned a lot of the foundational concepts of finance and operations on the job, but I was eager to dive more deeply into the details of the business of healthcare.”

He adds: “I also want to be on the front lines of the fight in healthcare administration to balance fiscal, clinical, educational, and operations expectations, and I believed the MMHC program was just the way for me to train for that formidable job.”

With a full-time job and a family that includes three children, Davis appreciated how the MMHC program took into account what he describes as the “logistical considerations” of participating. “The schedule with Thursday nights and weekends is really reasonable,” he says, “and the 13 months is workable as well. I appreciate the efficiency of that.”

Davis has found the opportunity to interact with—and learn from—other healthcare professionals to be one of the biggest boosts to his knowledge. For example, he notes that one of his homework group colleagues is an emergency room physician at one of VUMC’s regional facilities. “I learned a lot from him,” Davis says, “about how all the hospitals interact with each other and how patients get transferred from one facility to another.

“One of the people in my capstone group is a clinical pathologist, so I’ve learned a lot about the lab he works with. Beyond the business of healthcare that you learn in class, you can see how people take that learning and interpret it for their specific context.”

Davis says he was able to apply new knowledge in the context of his own position every week. For example, he applied queuing theory and throughput modeling from an operations course to help Vanderbilt’s psychiatric hospital optimize its patient bed mix. “Keeping the same number of beds,” he explains, “we addressed such questions as whether they should shift which populations they serve with those beds. How can they most efficiently utilize the space they have? What’s the financial return per patient visit?

“Applying these tools that I know to be robust and accurate has been great. I feel much more valuable to my organization as a result. The practical skills I’ve learned in the MMHC program will prepare me to meet the future of healthcare head on.”