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Nurse Applies Business School Savvy to the World of Managed Care
A background as a surgical nurse gives Cynthia Zydel the medical expertise to discuss diseases and case management at the managed care company where she works.
But it was the MBA she earned at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business that allowed her to rise to vice president of strategic planning and Medicare at Gateway Health Plan.
"People think, 'A nurse with an MBA: That's interesting,' " says Zydel. "And because I've worked on what I call the 'other side,' the provider side, I think it gives me a very strong perspective on the needs of the members."
Zydel, who was named one of the Katz School's distinguished alumni in 2008, worked in neurosurgery and orthopaedic surgery for seven years before moving into middle management positions at two different hospitals. "Even at the time I was on the hospital side, I was working in utilization management, which looks at health care costs, how much time people are in the hospital, and the business impact on the hospital and the cost of care," she says.
During this time, Zydel was considering an advanced nursing or public health-related degree. Her then boss, a Katz School alumnus, got her thinking about an MBA. And the more Zydel thought about it, the more she realized it was the right fit.
Six months before graduating from Katz, she accepted a position at what was then Sewickley Valley Hospital, where she spent three years as vice president for quality. She graduated from the Katz School in 1991, and while she had a good job at Sewickley Valley, she decided to go out on her own as a consultant.
"There's something about graduate school that opens that entrepreneurial side in a lot of people's heads, and it did [in] mine," she says.
She founded a Pittsburgh-area health care consulting firm, working with hospitals, physician practices, and Gateway Health Plan. In 2005, she accepted the vice president's position at Gateway and immediately assumed responsibility for its new Medicare product, which launched in early 2006.
With the worlds of business and health care intersecting more each year, the idea of a health-focused MBA is more common today than it was in 1991. Even so, Zydel says the business fundamentals she learned then have carried her throughout her career, whether it was in consulting or with Gateway.
"I definitely think the case studies were helpful," she says. "When you look at the decisions that are made that lead to [a company's] ultimate demise, you can see the turning point."