Mr. Wicks is Vice Chair for Administration for the Department of Medicine.
What is your expertise?
Probably the best way to describe my expertise is that of an administrative generalist. Throughout my 40+ years in healthcare administration I have directly managed large hospital ancillary and support departments, a stand-alone children’s rehabilitation hospital, a children’s hospital integrated within a larger academic medical center, several large physician practices at three academic referral centers, and have served in Human Resources and Strategic Planning leadership roles here at the UNC School of Medicine.
What is your current role in the Department of Medicine?
I function as the chief administrative officer of the Department of Medicine. That means that all of the financial, human resources, strategic planning, information services and operations aspects of leading the Department are my responsibility to oversee. To accomplish this in such a large and complex organization, though, one person cannot possibly do this alone. Consequently, we are putting together an extraordinarily talented team of experts in the areas of operations, accounting/finance, human resources, strategic and data analysis, revenue cycle analysis, fund raising, information technology and website design/social media management. We work together as a team and in concert with Dr Falk and the Vice Chairs to solidify the foundations of the Department and to implement new approaches to fundamentally change and improve the way that care is provided to our patients.
What current project or initiative at UNC are you involved in that you are excited about?
There are actually two initiatives about which I am very excited. One is in the Department of Medicine and the other is a UNC HCS-wide project.
The first initiative is helping to put the new vision into place that Dr Falk brings to our Department……….changing the way we deliver care to our patients. This will ultimately require us to function very differently in a changing healthcare environment by managing populations of patients, working in integrated networks and in value-based and other more challenging reimbursement environments. This will also require that we become more integrated across the UNC system and use new innovative ways to deliver and support our educational and research missions in such a way that we enable all of our missions to excel, so that our faculty will be successful and so that we are able preserve the financial health of the Department.
The other initiative is Carolina Value………..a UNC Health Care System effort to improve our operations and service to our patients while improving the financial performance of the system through implementing new efficiencies, reduced costs and increased revenues. I am currently serving as the School of Medicine’s Executive Co-Sponsor for this effort. Balancing all of these pressures so that all of our missions remain not only healthy, but world class is a complex challenge in our academic environment.
How do you like to spend your free time?
I am the very proud grandfather of two beautiful granddaughters. (Be careful if you ask about them. I have hundreds of pictures.) When my wife, Susie, and I are not with them and the rest of our family, we like to spend our time at the beach relaxing and exploring there with our friends on Bogue Banks.