Joan M. Podleski’s sense of adventure is in her genes. Her grandfather married a woman he met in France during World War I — he spoke no French and she spoke no English.
Podleski’s mother left college at age 19 to join the Marines during World War II because she wanted to serve and was looking for adventure.
Podleski’s father said he didn’t just want to be alive, but to live.
It’s no surprise that Podleski inherited her family’s desire to live life to the fullest and to take on new challenges.
That’s likely why she was chosen to implement the vision of what is now the Center for Advanced Medicine (CAM), a cooperative effort of the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and later, to be the University’s first privacy officer, ensuring the University is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA.
It’s also likely why she and her husband chose to add three Russian children to their family after their own children were grown.
Podleski, also assistant vice chancellor for clinical affairs and executive director for clinical operations of the Faculty Practice Plan, which oversees the medical school’s clinical practice activities, joined the University in 1986 in the general counsel’s office on the Danforth Campus.
She had been a stay-at-home mom of two children, working part-time at Christian Hospital’s emergency department front desk.
“That’s when I got really interested in health care, but I knew I didn’t want to be a clinician,” Podleski says.
An eye for a challenge
Previously, Podleski had worked in banking and finance, but changed jobs every couple of years.
“I did it because I liked learning new things and new challenges,” she says. “I decided that the diversity of Washington University would give me the opportunity to do that without having to change employers. And the University has done a good job of that. I don’t think I can count how many business cards I’ve had in the 20 years I’ve been here.”
She moved to the medical school in 1989, working on managed-care contracts and contract administration for Lee Fetter, then associate dean for administration and finance and now president of St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
“We recruited Joan to the medical school in the very early days of formation of the Faculty Practice Plan for an assignment that had no track record of success,” Fetter says. “Joan was charting new territory with our organization of managed-care payor relationships, and she turned out to be perfect for the job. Undaunted by the lack of a job description, Joan viewed the assignment as a challenge and was successful in carrying it out. That has been her style since, and the medical school has been the beneficiary.”
She moved to the Department of Neurosurgery for four years as business manager and in 1996, was asked to orchestrate the planning for a new patient-focused ambulatory care center, which became the CAM.
She worked with both the clinical practices and the architects.
“I talked with the clinicians about what we wanted this building to be,” she says. “I told them this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape how we become one adult practice in a lot of ways.”
James P. Crane, M.D., associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs and chief executive officer of the Faculty Practice Plan, recruited Podleski to oversee the CAM planning.
“Joan was a key individual, not only in the facility design, but also in reorganizing and streamlining the way we deliver care to make it more patient-focused,” Crane says. “Our vision was to integrate all of our outpatient activities into a state-of-the-art facility that would offer world-class care, outstanding service and an ‘ideal’ patient experience.”
Crane continues, “Joan, through her interactions with the faculty and clinical departments, played a major role in achieving these objectives.”
About the time construction of the CAM was wrapping up, HIPAA was going into effect. Podleski said several people suggested to her that she could be the University’s privacy officer.
“Then I made the mistake of taking a trip out of the country,” she says with a laugh. “I was literally 16 time zones away in the far east of Russia when I was officially named privacy officer.”
In that role, Podleski ensures that patient information is kept confidential and educates University employees about complying with the law.
“Compliance is becoming a huge burden for our faculty and staff, and it is not going to go away,” she says. “So we have to continue to figure out better ways to help them cope with the regulations by giving them better tools and better training and be facilitators, not just the police.”
Podleski said the part of her job she loves most is the education and training. She credits three Faculty Practice Plan staff with providing excellent training for faculty and staff: Kelley Mullen, director of service quality and scheduling; Stephanie Weisenborn, service quality coordinator; and Pat Fischer, privacy office educator.
While each specializes in certain areas, all Faculty Practice Plan staff worked together on a clinical skills demonstration last fall, which they plan to offer to clinical staff twice a year.
Family focused
As involved as Podleski has been in the workings of the medical school, she also is very involved with her family, which has grown in recent years. Podleski and her husband, Tony, have two biological children: Genevieve, 27, Web coordinator for news and information in Public Affairs on the Danforth Campus and a WUSTL graduate (LA ’01, UC ’06), and Aidan, 23, an architecture student working in Australia.
Podleski said she and her husband always were very involved in their children’s lives. When Genevieve was living in the WUSTL dorms and Aidan was busy with high school, “it was very quiet in our house, and I didn’t like it,” she says. She and her husband discussed adopting a child from Russia and then raised the idea with their children.
“Finally, my husband said, ‘If we’re crazy enough to think about doing this, then we’re probably the people who should do it,'” Podleski recalls.
The family worked with an agency and saw a photo of a boy from northeast Russia named Konstantin. When viewing a videotape of the boy at their home, Podleski said she and Genevieve “fell head over heels.” After two trips to Russia, 5-year-old Konstantin became the newest member of the Podleski family.
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Joan M. Podleski University titles: Assistant vice chancellor for clinical affairs, executive director for clinical operations of the Faculty Practice Plan, University privacy officer Tenure at University: 20 years Hobbies: Singing in the choir at The Church of St. Michael and St. George in Clayton (“That’s my therapy,” she says), seeing movies, reading, playing Dungeons & Dragons with her kids Words of wisdom: Podleski recalls something her former boss Lee Fetter told her that has stuck with her for years. “He said: ‘The missions of the school are to teach, to do research and to take care of patients. Administrators don’t do any of those things. So our only job is to help the people who are here to do those things.'” |
A couple of years later, the Podleskis decided that Konstantin, who goes by Kostya, needed a sibling closer to his age. On one of their first trips to Russia, they met Valentina at an orphanage, and although they fell in love with her, too, she wasn’t yet available for adoption.
They agreed to adopt another little girl named Elena. A week before they were to bring Elena home from Russia, the agency called to say Valentina was available for adoption.
“So we made three trips to Russia in 2002: in March to meet Elena, in June to bring Elena home and to meet Valentina, and in November to bring Valentina home,” she says. Kostya is now 12, Valentina is 13 and Elena is 9.
“In the space of about two years, we went from having two kids to five, and it’s a blast,” she says. “It’s more chaos, more fun, more headaches, more challenges and more learning new things.”
Another adventure the family took together was when Tony was found to have a large colloid cyst in his brain about a year after they’d adopted their last child. “If that had happened three years earlier, they would have never allowed us to adopt,” she says.
Tony has recovered well and is enjoying retirement.
“Every time a door closes, another door opens,” she says. “And that’s been the fun about working at the University.”
Denise McCartney, associate vice chancellor for research administration, noted Podleski’s ability to find a way to have fun at work and at play.
“One of the things that always amazes me is her ability to think on her feet and articulate complex ideas articulately and succinctly,” McCartney says. “This is a skill that is critical in a complex and fast-moving organization like ours. As a person, Joan has taken on surprising responsibilities with the adoption of her children into a family of children already grown. Perhaps that is how she manages to stay so focused on the important issues of life and work.”