No job is beneath you: Kevin Sommers

Kevin Sommers is a 2018 graduate of the Harbert College of Business at Auburn University. He currently serves as the Assistant Chief Financial Officer of TriStar Skyline Medical Center, part of HCA Healthcare, in Nashville, TN. He has worked at SCA Health (part of Optum and United Health) in their Financial Operations group, supporting surgery centers and surgical hospitals across multiple states. Before that, Kevin was a member of the finance team at UAB Health System in Birmingham, Alabama.

Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, Kevin is a proud alumnus of Auburn University, holding a degree in accounting. He furthered his education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a Master of Science in Health Administration and a Master of Business Administration. 

Outside of work, Kevin enjoys staying active with golf, tennis, and pickleball, and loves to travel and spend time with family and friends. He currently serves on the Young Alumni Council for the Harbert College of Business and is an avid supporter of Auburn athletics.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to the Harbert College of Business podcast with your hosts, Sarah Gascon and Currie Dyess. Today's guest is Kevin Sommers. Kevin is the Assistant Chief financial officer of Tristar Skyline Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a 2018 graduate from the Harbert College of Business in accounting.

Currie Dyess:

Kevin Sommers, War Eagle and welcome to the show.

Kevin Sommers:

War Eagle. Thank you for having me.

Sarah Gascon:

Kevin. You've had an interesting journey to Auburn. Tell us a little bit about it.

Kevin Sommers:

Yeah, so I grew up in Alabama. My dad went to Auburn, so I grew up an Auburn fan. My brother and my cousins all went to Auburn as well, so it's definitely a family thing. But funny enough, I actually almost went to a different university. So there's kind of a story behind that, which is probably a little bit, but just stay with me for a minute. So I'm kind of a unicorn in the fact that I knew what I wanted to do with my career when I was a senior in high school. So starting out as a freshman in high school, I wanted to be a trauma surgeon. I loved, I wanted to be that person who helps people at their worst moments, and I just loved medicine. No one in my immediate family or extended family was a physician, and so I wanted to get exposure any way that I could.

So I spent hundreds of hours volunteering and shadowing different physicians at my local hospital and was just super set on becoming a doctor. Well, one day I was volunteering and I ran into a hospital administrator in the hallway. She took me under her wing and from that point on introduced me to the business side of healthcare. I was really just unaware that the career of being a hospital administrator even existed. But when I thought through what I was passionate about and what I naturally gravitated towards, I realized those were not the same thing. And being a doctor really actually wasn't for me. I wasn't awful at physics or chemistry or anything like that, but I wasn't passionate about it and I realized that I actually have more of a business mind. It might sound wild, but I walk into a restaurant and I immediately wonder how much their rent is or wonder how profitable they are.

So that's probably a pretty good indication that the business world is more for me. But then going back to my passion, I loved medicine, but I also loved the business side of things and had more of a business mind and a hospital administrator just kind of marries the two fields. But there was one specific degree and university that my mentor told me about that would be beneficial if someone wanted to be a hospital administrator. And that was the master of Science in Health administration, specifically at the University of Birmingham or the University of Alabama at Birmingham. And it's the top ranked program in the country, which makes it pretty selective to get into. So as a senior in high school, I thought if I went to UAB for my undergraduate degree, I would have a better shot at getting into that program,

I ultimately decided to go to Auburn for the full SEC experience and had the intentions of staying just one year and then transferring to UAB. But I immediately fell in love with Auburn just like everyone else does, and ended up earning my accounting degree and just had an incredible experience at Auburn and in the Harbert College of Business.

Currie:

What about Auburn? You said you had a great experience here. What about Auburn gave you that great experience and allowed you to move forward and go get those master's degrees and do what you're doing now?

Kevin Sommers:

When I got to Auburn, I really wanted to get a degree that would set me up for success and ultimately landed on accounting. They call accounting the language of business, and I really could not agree more. The knowledge of the business world that I gained through my accounting studies, my internships and professors at Auburn has without a doubt benefited my career and just made me more aware of how the world works. Any successful business person understands accounting, you don't have to love it. I'm not sure that many people that do, but you do have to understand it, and I'm so glad that I got to pursue my accounting degree. It's difficult, but it's really worth it.

Sarah:

Did you do any internships while you were here at Auburn or even in your master's program that helped set you up for success later on in your career?

Kevin Sommers:

Absolutely. I did internships with academic medical centers, with consulting firms, with nonprofit health systems. I really was able to get connected with people from Auburn and from my grad school that allowed me to go out and get real firsthand experience on what the field was like, and I'm very thankful for those opportunities.

Sarah:

And as a follow-up, what is your day-to-day like now with all those experiences behind you? Is it any different, is a little bit more challenging?

Kevin Sommers:

Yeah, so I currently serve as the assistant Chief Financial Officer at Tristar Skyline Medical Center, which is part of HCA Healthcare. HGA is a large publicly held company that is comprised of about 146 hospitals and has over 2,400 sites of care around the country and in the United Kingdom, my hospital specifically is a 286 bed hospital level one trauma center, which means we receive the most critically ill or injured patients from the Nashville and surrounding areas. So in my role as the assistant Chief Financial Officer, I support our CFO and ensuring that our financial operations are really not just efficient, but also positioned to enhance and sustain the exceptional care that we provide. Healthcare finance may seem behind the scenes to most, but I view it as an integral part of the critical services that our team delivers, and really every decision that we make impacts the resources available to our colleagues, the technology that we use, and ultimately the care that we provide to our patients.

So that's where I just find tremendous fulfillment and just knowing that my work contributes to the larger mission of improving the lives of those in need, especially those who are here during some of their most difficult moments. My day-to-day is never the same, which makes it difficult, but also kind of exciting. I am part of the senior leadership team at the hospital, so I typically get pulled in many directions during the day. There are times when I'm in my office looking at financials or diving into some data, and there are also times when things happen where I need to help with something, whether it be throwing on scrubs and going down to the emergency room when they get backed up or talking to an upset patient or helping one of my coworkers with a project that they're working on. I also function as the hospital's chief staffing officer, which basically is making sure that we are being productive and efficient and ensuring that we are good stewards of the resources that we have.

I spend a decent amount of my time learning about the roles of our employees. I'm not clinical, I'm not a doctor or a nurse or anything like that. So I throw on scrubs once or twice a week and spend time with them just trying to understand more about their roles and the processes that we have, and it gives me a greater appreciation for our clinical teams and really helps me when I need to support them. And then in addition to that, every senior leader at my hospital attends patient rounds every day. This is where our physicians and nurses and social workers and an administrator come together to kind of discuss each patient on the unit, which increases alignment and make sure that everyone is on the same page about the patient and the care that they're needing. When I think about it, ultimately I'm a numbers person and having the opportunity to see firsthand the incredible work that goes on into patient care has helped me when making decisions that might affect a department or where our hospital as a whole, and that just speaks to the mission of HCA healthcare and the patient-centered culture that they have created, and it's truly amazing to be a part of.

Currie:

Kevin. That is incredible. Okay, we got a lot to unpack here. It sounds like you wear a lot of hats. First we got to ask, you're a young man. How did you get to this point? So fast being an assistant CFO.

Kevin Sommers:

I am very thankful to have had the opportunities that I've been given. I started out really just with the goal of getting to grad school, and then from there I had the goal of securing an opportunity at a hospital. So I went to UAB health system where I spent a few years in their finance department, and then from there I wanted to exposure into a different kind of healthcare. So I joined a company called SDA Health, which owns and operates surgery centers in surgical hospitals. So I was in their financial operations group there for a few years and then ultimately now have been privileged to be a part of the senior leadership team at my current hospital. So a lot of dedication, hard work, and just opportunities that I've taken advantage of.

Currie:

Okay. Kevin, one of your hats is making accurate and prudent financial purchasing decisions. How do you go about doing that on such a large scale with such important purchasing decisions?

Kevin Sommers:

More than 17% of the United States gross domestic product is spent on healthcare, and it costs a lot to run a hospital. You have labor, which includes salaries of physicians, nurses, everyone else who takes up a large portion of that expense, and you also have supplies and equipment that are extremely expensive, but are also necessary to provide top quality care to patients. So we put together proformas to know how cost effective a robot might be or a service line or clinic might be. We also utilize data to determine trends, whether that be clinical, financial volume related or that sort of thing. We really, with the amount of money that we are spending, healthcare companies lean heavily on data to help ensure that we are spending money appropriately and that it is a good investment for the organization, the patients, and the community as a whole, which makes that data analytics piece extremely important to me.

Sarah:

As a follow up to that, what's your thought process as you're going through the system? As Currie said, you wear a lot of different hats and you spend time with patients and with doctors and nurses. So there's a lot of things that you have to consider when you are purchasing or making these purchasing decisions as well. It's not just the numbers, right? It's also maybe even some of the emotional aspects of it.

Kevin Sommers:

Absolutely. The human aspect is everything, and HGA is a very large company, but it's extremely patient focused. I am fortunate to be a part of such an awesome organization. Our mission statement is found all over our hospitals, and it says, above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life. And you bring up a really good point. So Covid kind of brought out some of this, brought it to light, but healthcare is a very difficult field. You don't wake up one day and decide that you want to be a patient or expect to have something go wrong with your loved one. Specifically at my hospital, people are having one of the worst days of their lives, and a lot of times it is life altering. So you have that emotional piece of supporting and caring for patients and their loved ones.

But as hospital leader, you also do your best to support the hospitals and their employees who give a hundred percent of themselves to the patients and their colleagues each day. Every patient deserves everything we have. And watching an employee have something incredibly difficult happen in one room, and then watching them check their emotions at the door as they enter another patient's room and just give that patient 100% of themselves is one of the most impactful things that you can see. And it's truly a superpower, and I'm thankful for our clinical and support teams that do that every single day. And really my job is to make sure that I pour into those teams who are delivering that care and just to make sure that they have what they need both physically and emotionally to care for others.

Currie:

So really, you're kind of doing what they're doing where they check their emotions at the door after having just seen somebody, you're pouring into those people emotionally and then you're having to turn around and be logical and analytical, making other decisions. How do you keep from getting emotionally taxed and burned out?

Kevin Sommers:

Yeah, that's a difficult question, but just having the balance, the work-life balance, I go home and your phones have a do not disturb function on them, right? So I've set up a do not disturb function on my phone that I call nights and weekends, and whenever I leave the hospital, I check that on and it basically removes out emails and notifications from the different apps that I receive every day. You leave a hospital, but a hospital is a 24 7 operation, and so there's always going to be alerts and notifications that you receive. So one of the biggest things that I've learned is just having a work-life balance, knowing how to balance the work itself and also your personal life. It can be very difficult, but it's one of those things that I'm just, again, extremely thankful and grateful for our clinical teams who see things every single day that are really difficult and it truly is a superpower what they do.

Sarah:

Aside from accounting, what are some of the skills, soft or small that you learned or honed at Auburn that has allowed you to have some explosive career growth?

Kevin Sommers:

I mentioned the analytical piece. I would probably say that that is the number one thing that I have learned at Auburn that I use every single day in my role. Like I said, there's a lot of healthcare spend and we just need to make sure that we are being good stewards of the resources that we have, and that requires me to look at trends and different data sets in order to slice it and dice it and get to the point where we can make a decision based off of that data. I think another piece is the professionalism that I have learned from Auburn. It taught me how to dress, how to socialize with anyone, ranging from executives to people. The street, the social skills that Auburn teaches their students is incredible, and it's something that every organization looks to. You can teach the accounting, but you cannot teach the social skills as much. So that's probably the biggest thing that I've learned from Auburn.

Currie:

Kevin, talk to us about the Young Alumni Council and why that's important to you.

Kevin Sommers:

For sure. So I love Auburn. I am forever grateful for the mentors knowledge and really the relationships that I've formed there. And I want more people to have the same incredible experience that I had. And I also want to continue pushing for the Harbert College of Business to be the best college it can be, which I believe is a top business school. They have some of the best professors and top tier facilities and just a super smart group of students. And I, along with so many others, love staying connected to a place that has benefited me so much

Currie:

As a member of the senior leadership team for a publicly held company, level one trauma center. Tell us a little bit about your leadership philosophy and how you are able to inspire and get good work out of those you lead.

Kevin Sommers:

I think back to my time growing up when I was in high school, my first job was at a Mexican restaurant in Huntsville, Alabama, and there were a few owners of that establishment. And one day, I remember it was a Friday afternoon. It was a super busy day. I think it was around Cinco de Mayo. So as you can imagine at a Mexican restaurant, it was extremely busy. And I remember seeing one of the owners come in and he took a broom and he was sweeping up some rice or whatever it was on the ground. And I ended up asking him about it, and I was a busboy at the time, and that was kind of my role is to sweep up everything, make sure all the tabletops were cleaned off and everything like that. And I was like, oh my gosh, no, the owner should not have to be doing this.

And I was like, Hey, I can let me grab this broom in this mop. I'll do that myself. That's my job. And he looked at me and he was like, no, no, no, you're busy doing other things. I got it. And my takeaway from that was, wow, what a servant leader that is where nothing is beneath him here is a super successful business owner that oversees many restaurants in the area and in North Alabama, and here he is on a Friday afternoon sweeping up other people's messes. That really was my job. So I took back from that just a servant leadership philosophy and taking that to the hospital. If I see piece of paper on the ground or some trash on the ground, I'm going to stop and pick it up. And it also, I would never ask someone to do something. I would never ask for someone to do something that I would not want to do.

And that's just kind of my mindset in going about it. And it's funny, I had maybe a couple weeks ago I picked up a piece of paper or a piece of trash in the hallway, and two days later, someone came up to me and said, Hey, why did you pick up that piece of paper? We have a janitorial staff that does that. And one, I was taken aback and I was like, oh, they saw that, and you really don't know who's looking at you or who's watching you, so always do the right thing there, but also, no, this is, as a member of this hospital, it is everyone's role to do this job. It's not just the janitorial staff, it's the CEO of our company. It's a nurse in the emergency room, it's an x-ray technician. Everyone is responsible for keeping this place clean. Specifically at my hospital and kind of the leadership that this team has set is that nothing is beneath anyone, and just because you have a title or a role does not mean that you don't play a vital part in keeping the facility clean or serving patients. If I have that same mentality as an assistant chief financial officer, I impact patients too. So having just the awareness and just the servant attitude that whatever I can do affects other people is kind of how I go about things.

Sarah:

Throughout your career, I'm sure there's been some highs and lows. Can you describe to us some of the more challenging situations that you've encountered and how you overcame them?

Kevin Sommers:

One of the big things that I have had to overcome in my short career so far is being a leader, and quite frankly, being young and being a lot of times the youngest person on a senior leadership team, and when I step into a role or in a hospital or in a situation, I have it in the back of my mind that I'm the youngest and probably the newest person to join their team, and it is a lot of pressure, and it requires me to make sure that I'm going above and beyond in my role and to make sure that I'm coming off in the right way, that I'm asking good questions, that I'm being a productive member of that team. A lot of times it can be overwhelming coming into a team where nothing about the hospital or the organization, and you feel like you're drinking out of a fire hose, but you have to just dive in and immerse yourself with the experience. I mean, like I said, starting out at this hospital, I spent weeks in scrubs just going to different departments to understand what they do so that I have some knowledge to go forward with the decisions that I'm making. That's probably the biggest thing is overcoming that stereotype that, yes, you're young and you're new, but you do have valuable things to add to this team.

Currie:

Kevin, what advice would you have for maybe current college students, recent grads, younger folks that are trying to follow in a similar path?

Kevin Sommers:

I would probably say just go for it. Take chances on yourself. Apply for that program or that grad school or the job that seems unobtainable or take a risk. Trying that business idea. Really the worst thing that can happen is that you end up in the same place that you are now. Probably another piece of advice is to get involved. Auburn University has so many clubs, service opportunities, networking opportunities, sporting events, as we all know, and so much more, and there's just something for everyone. If you put yourself out there, relationships are everything, and I don't want anyone to not take advantage of what Auburn provides because you will get out of it what you put into it.

Sarah:

So what's next for you, Kevin?

Kevin Sommers:

That's a good question. I'm loving my role in this hospital and being a part of HCA healthcare. One of the best parts about it is the development opportunities that it provides you. With 186 hospitals in the organization, there's obviously a lot of room for development and growth, and I'm not sure what my one or two year plan is, or 10 year plan, but I'm really excited about staying in healthcare and just learning about the hospitals and the people and the communities and patients that we serve, and the sky's the limit, and we'll see what happens.

Currie:

That's so great, Kevin. So moving forward, if any of our listeners have any questions or they would really just like to keep up with your journey, how can they keep up with you? How can they reach out to you?

Kevin Sommers:

Yeah, I'd love to stay connected with people. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, just Kevin Sommers, K-E-V-I-N-S-O-M-M-E-R-S, and I'd love to connect with people.

Sarah:

We appreciate your time. Thank you so much. War Eagle!

Kevin Sommers:

War Eagle.

Narrator:

Harbert. Inspiring Business.

Produced by the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business at Auburn University.