Hospital executives in the American health care sector are at the vanguard of change and innovation. Whether these health care professionals have backgrounds in administration, research, or clinical care, they make decisions that have a long-term effect on providers, patients, and policy. Medical innovations like the expedited COVID-19 vaccine development process, challenging technological problems like health data analytics and telemedicine, and security and public health issues like an aging population and universal access to healthcare all highlight the need for leadership in the healthcare industry.

With 20 years of experience in healthcare, Judy Ducsik’s expertise involves leading complex matrixed teams through divergent change management to achieve their goals and aspirations. She is the founder and CEO of Expert Vue, which operates as a platform for healthcare collaboration.

Starting her career as a nuclear medicine technologist, Judy leads with the spirit of transformation, high energy, and competitive nature. While she quickly worked her way through the leadership ranks, Judy’s leadership has fostered success in improving quality, process efficiencies, population health strategies, physician recruitment, establishing governance, integration of care networks, and program financial sustainability.

As a healthcare executive, Judy has overseen operations and strategic development of heart and vascular programs in Texas, Alaska, Washington, and the West Coast.

Who is Judy?

Judy was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, to teenage parents who had not graduated high school. Her mom started working in healthcare at the age of seventeen. Judy knows she inherited her mother’s independence, resilience, and determination. When she was 16, Judy competed in a national taekwondo tournament and placed 1st in sparring and forms, which qualified her for the Junior Olympics. Even though she did not get to go to the Junior Olympics that year, she learned a hard lesson about the importance of believing in herself and being surrounded by strong supporters and teammates.

Judy did not have a college plan sorted out after high school graduation. However, numerous community colleges in San Antonio provided integrated courses with nearby four-year universities so that students could transfer their first two years of credits toward a bachelor’s degree. Most importantly, these colleges were reasonably priced and offered daytime and evening classes. Judy, therefore, enrolled in her first semester of community college in 1999.

Judy decided to go to Austin, Texas, the following year because she was determined to pursue a legal education. She intended to enroll in a local community college before continuing to the esteemed University of Texas to get a pre-law degree. She discovered herself confronting a new route to motherhood in the summer of that year.

Then, on September 11th, 2001, one of the most horrific attacks in the U.S. occurred, and Judy became a terrified mother of a six-month-old baby. She recalls, “Watching the call to action from across the nation was incredible, law enforcement, firefighters, healthcare, military, volunteers, all coming together in a crisis.” This was the moment in Judy’s life when she learned how important community was. Judy wanted to be a part of that and never wanted to feel helpless.

Judy attended the University of Incarnate Word from 2002-2004 and obtained her Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Medicine. She immediately went from being a clinical student to walking on as a full-time employee. Nuclear medicine is an imaging modality that uses the body’s natural physiology to absorb radioactive isotopes attached to a pharmaceutical to evaluate the anatomy and physiologic function of a specified organ or diagnosis. A special camera is used to obtain images by counting the energy being immitted from the patient. She fell in love with this field because it was cutting edge; she got to help patients in their time of need and worked at a health system that served the greater Southwest Texas community.

In the fall of 2006, Judy gave birth to the next light of her life, a daughter who would add a new color to her worldview. After obtaining her Masters in Business Administration with a concentration in Healthcare Management from Lady of the Lake University in 2007, she took a position at her former alma mater as an Adjunct Clinical Instructor for the nuclear medicine program. At this time in Judy’s career, she realized teaching and encouraging people along their journey was her passion. She was always happy to see them go across the stage, with their family and perhaps their children, cheering them on, knowing how hard they had worked and their sacrifices.

Road to Becoming Proficient

Judy credits the academic learning environment, which was affiliated with a significant medical school and health professions institution, enabling her to enjoy her professional development as a student and an employee. The doctors encouraged a comfortable environment for asking questions and were always happy to share knowledge. At this point in her career, she valued diversity of culture and expertise.

Judy’s great desire to comprehend hospital operations, the complicated workings of a health system, and how choices are made led her to earn her MBA in Healthcare Management. It took a few years before being offered the chance to advance into management, but the next step in her career would result in a salary drop, which was a dangerous move considering that she now had two small children and student loan debt. She thus took a calculated risk and made the best professional decision.

Judy’s career would continue to encompass leadership positions in cardiovascular programs over the next thirteen years. As an Executive Director, she was in charge of capital planning, workforce development, clinical outcomes, workforce recruiting, retention, financial sustainability, and programming development.

Judy started working as a cardiac catheterization lab operations manager in 2009, her first hospital management post. Although it was not her first leadership position, it came with a higher degree of responsibility and involved managing a department with a net operating revenue of roughly $40 million. Procedures including peripheral artery stenting, pacemaker insertions, and stenting of heart arteries take place in a cardiac catheterization lab, also known as a cath lab. If necessary, a patient experiencing a heart attack is carefully hurried to the cath lab to have the offending clogged arteries opened. At this point in her career, Judy understood the value of working as a team in a high-stress situation.

On the West coast’s Providence, a sizable non-profit centered on religion, Judy joined in 2015. In three of the company’s seven areas, which include Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, she has held the position of Executive Director for Cardiovascular Programs. During her tenure, she helped communities restore critical care services, improve clinical operations, and instill cultures of collaboration and trust. She has also experienced working through a significant labor strike and managed complex operations through the COVID-19 pandemic.

In May of 2022, Judy joined the Providence Oregon Heart Institute, which serves patients throughout the state and beyond with eight acute care hospitals and thirty-seven heart clinics. She shares, “Our program offers comprehensive quaternary level cardiovascular services, including heart transplant.” She adds that the heart team comprises approximately three hundred employees, sixty-nine physicians, and forty-three advanced practice providers.

Professional Reality

The guiding principle to Judy’s success has been to keep an open-ended path for growth and development. She had a sudden interruption in 2021 that was also eye-opening, and she decided to enhance her skills and duty as a change agent in healthcare. Judy was accepted to Walden University in May 2021, and she is currently pursuing a doctorate in business administration with a focus on healthcare management. She was recently inducted into the Golden Key International Honour Society. Her mission is to study organizational and leadership theory to improve social entrepreneurship, change management, and eliminate inequities in access to healthcare. Around the same time, Judy started the idea of her professional and personal brand, Expert Vue. She mentions, “Everything I have learned in my personal and professional journey up to this moment was key to not just surviving, but rising out of the ashes as a new person, a new leader, and a renewed compassion for humankind.”

Sharing the Importance of Leadership

Expert Vue serves as Judy’s professional learning platform and future concept of integrating thought leadership into management research. She states, “The complexity of healthcare is multifactorial, but the phenomenon of how we grow and succeed in healthcare lies with how we successfully engage caregivers who deliver care.” She believes the needs of the team and her own as leaders are variable and bi-directional and must have some consistency. She asserts, “Trust, transparency, teamwork, reward, recognition, communication, and inspiration are all core values leaders must exemplify and are as intricate as they are vital to the rejuvenation of the healthcare workforce. One of the favorite parts of what I do is building relationships and teams.” She loves getting people excited and engaged to participate, or a more fun way she translates is “making it a party people want to come to.” She wants people to walk in and walk away with a sense of purpose, value, and a place they belong.

Digital Innovation & the Post-Pandemic World

The organization’s ability to offer care with ease of access and innovation is essential to maintaining a competitive edge. Furthermore, attracting a workforce is more difficult in the social and digital revolution, given the flexible nature of industries outside of healthcare.

Judy claims that most of the use of digital technology in healthcare has been for information exchange and archiving, which has compelled the conversion of paper records to electronic medical records or transferrable and secure medical grade digital imagery. She adds that medical innovations like robotic surgery, medications, or equipment to provide novel medical therapies or minimally invasive procedures have become major focal points of innovation. As far as Judy sees it, in an industry where the care process starts with needing to touch a patient, it has been challenging to balance remote versus in-person work environments. She asserts, “Sure, we have been successful in administrative spaces and centralized services such as human resources, information systems support, and central scheduling.” 

A considerable opportunity exists for virtual care, particularly in rural regions of the nation. Judy saw increased patient willingness to participate in virtual visits with their cardiologists during the pandemic, but in-person treatment is still needed. According to her, virtual care is here to stay, and when resources, payors, and systems of providing care align then patients, physicians, and caregivers will all evolve together.

Expert Vue Meaning & Message to Future Leaders

The phrase “Expert Vue” refers to a window with several points of view and a continuous line of knowledge. Like a parallel mirror, an image is an infinite series of reflections, just like the Expert Vue logo. In some ways or another, Judy’s leadership reflects her origins, her upbringing, her parents, her coworkers, her friends, her spouse, her kids, her house, her family, and previous leaders. Her advice to the next generation of leaders is to “Decide how you want to reflect on others, build relationships, be open to sharing knowledge, and your reflection will become infinite.” She feels grateful to all the people she reflects.

The Next in Career and Life

The adventures of Judy’s life have led her through happiness, excitement, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. However, what keeps her centered and sure is her family. She says, “I have an amazing husband and a beautiful, blended family of five children and want to reflect my heart and best self to my family.”

As she sees it, her professional journey over the next five years will continue to build Expert Vue as a platform to focus on strengthening the leadership approach in healthcare, restoring trust in the workforce, and making healthcare the team people want to be a part of.