When public health advocate, number cruncher, strategist and Beaver believer Chad Melvin, BS ’05, was a student at Oregon State, he didn’t realize he would one day sit on the 4th floor of Kaiser Permanente’s downtown Portland office building helping grow its business.
A Southern Oregon native, Chad thought he might attend the College of Business when he arrived at Oregon State, but says he wasn’t interested in widgets, rather something more topical. So he studied health care administration in the CPHHS and during that time met his wife, Megan Bioletto-Melvin, MPH ’05. After graduation, they both moved to Los Angeles, where Megan went to work at Kaiser Permanente and Chad worked on his MPH at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, studying health policy and management.
“I wanted to study in a very urban area because of the complexities of public health in those types of settings,” he says. “Urban areas are so different and so unique. What better place to do that than Los Angeles?”
After Chad completed an internship with the Veteran Affairs Healthcare System of Los Angeles, the couple realized how much they missed Oregon and moved back. Megan now manages Kaiser Permanente’s heart and vascular center, and Chad is senior director of market strategy and sales operations. “We’re both true believers in what Kaiser Permanente does,” he says.
Since joining Kaiser Permanente in 2007, he’s worked in marketing and market strategy, steadily increasing his capacity and role. As senior director of market strategy and sales operations, he currently leads 35 people who do market strategy, market analysis, sales operations, product development, business development, market research and proposal development.
“We’re truly a mission-driven organization,” he says, referencing Kaiser Permanente’s mission to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of its members and the communities it serves. “While my team does not work on the front line with our medical teams, we support the organization by developing strategies that help increase the number of consumers who have access to Kaiser Permanente’s top-quality care. We also do a lot of work with care delivery on measuring performance and serving as decision support to help leaders make strategy decisions to help the business grow.”
Case in point – Kaiser Permanente expanded services in Lane County this year, a medical office and dental office, credited in large part to Chad and his team, as they oversaw the project. “We are excited to now be serving our existing members who live or work in Eugene. We are motivated by the possibilities to expand access to our care to even more .”
Chad also mentioned that Kaiser Permanente is advancing its work in the virtual space, addressing how to take their model of medicine into communities where there is no physical presence, through virtual technology. “We’re not the only organization to offer telemedicine, but ours is backed by the entire Kaiser Permanente system and integrated medical record. The connectivity you get through our system is really second to none!”
Chad and his team is also leading an effort to open a neighborhood-based convenient care clinic in the Pearl District (downtown Portland) this fall that will be open to all members of the community, even those who aren’t Kaiser Permanente members. “We know consumers rely on us to make accessing care easy, and this is just one way we aim to do that. This is the first in what we intend to be a series of convenient care clinics, open to all ages. We also hope that those who haven’t previously received care from Kaiser Permanente will take the opportunity to give us a try,” he says.
Doing the right thing
“First and foremost, I believe in the model of Kaiser Permanente. I believe we do care the right way. The incentives are aligned to focus on the patient and the member, because the health plan doesn’t benefit from more or less care and neither does the physician. It’s really about the consumer and the member. I am motivated by the fact that no matter where you sit in our company, our employees are here to improve the life of our members and communities we serve. And if that means that I am supporting senior leadership to make a decision to expand our care or improve service or grow membership or meet the needs of an employer group, that gives me energy. Many of us who work in health care went into it for a reason, and it’s energizing to be around people like that every day.”
And who offers more energy than current students? Kaiser Permanente is planning to hire more than 60 paid interns this summer, and Chad supervises at least one, making sure he or she gets their own project. “You want them to walk away with something and be able to show someone, “Look! I did real work!” In addition, students who intern in Chad’s department learn about the multiple disciplines within market strategy by spending time in each functional area within his department.
“There are so many job options in health care that we’re trying to make it eye opening for students. Even in the business space, there are so many things you can choose from.”
Health care is becoming increasingly integrated, he says, with a focus on keeping the population healthy and not simply treating disease – a hallmark of OSU’s CPHHS. “I think the public health program at Oregon State can serve as a center of excellence for the state in that regard, and I am proud to be part of an organization, like Kaiser Permanente, that puts so much value on prevention,” he says.
In addition to supporting Beaver Athletics – each fall is spent at Reser Stadium – he’s also a big fan of his public health education at OSU.
“My wife only half-jokingly tells me that her graduate program at Oregon State was 10 times harder than mine at UCLA – because I was so prepared having gone through OSU’s undergraduate program,” he says. “Seriously, the preparation I had – from coursework to professors, to internships and the way it was designed, was strong and prepared me well. I’m not going to say graduate school was a breeze, but I was most definitely not out of place with those who had attended national top-tier universities. Oregon State served me well.”
About Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America’s leading health care providers and nonprofit health plans. Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente has a mission to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve more than 10 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia, including more than 540,000 medical and 250,000 dental members in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, dentists, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical and dental teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: kp.org.
More about Chad:
Find Chad on LinkedIn here.
Watch and listen to Chad discuss expansion, virtual care and convenient care here.