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URMIA Matters
URMIA Matters
URMIA Member Benefits
In this episode of URMIA Matters, Teresa Ransdell, URMIA’s Director of Membership and Marketing, speaks to Flo Hoskinson, Risk Manager at Oregon Health and Science University, Mellany Patrong, Director of Enterprise Risk Management at Texas Southern University, and Steve Stoeger-Moore, President of Districts Mutual Insurance and Risk Management Services, about the wide array of Member Benefits that URMIA has to offer its members. They share their favorite member benefits including URMIA’s Resource Guide, the Risk Inventory, Community Conversations, and the amazing connections they’ve made at both URMIA’s Annual and Regional Conferences. Though every member may have different needs for their institution or organization, they can all agree on the wonderful sense of community and welcome that URMIA brings to its members!
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Show Notes
URMIA’s 55th Annual Conference in NOLA, 9/28-10/2
URMIA’s 2024 Regional Conferences
Guests
Flo Hoskinson, Risk Manager- Oregon Health & Science University
Mellany Patrong, Director - Enterprise Risk Management- Texas Southern University
Steve Stoeger-Moore, President- Districts Mutual Insurance & Risk Management Services
Guest Host
Teresa Ransdell, Director of Membership & Marketing- URMIA
Transcript
Jenny Whittington: Hey there! Thanks for tuning into URMIA Matters, a podcast about higher education risk management, and insurance. Let’s get to it!
Teresa Ransdell: Hello to all of you in the higher ed risk management and insurance community. I'm Teresa Ransdell, URMIA's Director of Membership and Marketing, and today's guest host for this edition of URMIA Matters. I'm excited to host my first episode of our podcast, but even more excited by who is joining me today. I have Flo Hoskinson, Risk Manager at Oregon Health and Science University, Mellany Patrong, Director of Enterprise Risk Management at Texas Southern University, and Steve Stoeger-Moore, President of Districts Mutual Insurance and Risk Management Services. We are all together on the beautiful campus of Indiana University talking about URMIA. Flo, Mellany, and Steve, would you each introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do at your institution? Flo, you want to get us started?
Flo Hoskinson: Hello, thanks, Teresa, for hosting us here at the URMIA home office in Bloomington, Indiana. I'm Flo Hoskinson. I serve as the Risk Insurance and Claims Manager at Oregon Health and Science University. We are Oregon's largest hospital, and we have approximately 4000 students in addition to managing insurance and claims for OHSU. We are also a TPA for another hospital. This is my third year serving as URMIA's secretary.
Teresa Ransdell: Great. Good to have you here. Thank you. Mellany, tell us about you.
Mellany Patrong: So thanks so much. This is my first trip to this university, so I am excited to see the campus. And what I've seen so far is absolutely beautiful. So I'm looking forward to walking around and exploring a little bit. I'm Mellany Patron. I have the distinct pleasure of serving as Director of Enterprise Risk Management at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. My job there is everything, everywhere, all at once. My specific responsibilities are the insurance profile for the university and continuity of operations. I partner with DPS for emergency management. And then everything in between. So, it's sort of a call, Mellany, if you've got a question. She's been around for 12 years in this role. So if she doesn't know, she does know who to call.
Teresa Ransdell: So everybody on campus has your phone number.
Mellany Patrong: Unfortunately.
Teresa Ransdell: Steve, how about you?
Steve Stoeger-Moore: Hi, I'm Steve Stoeger-Moore, from Districts Mutual Insurance. We are a municipal mutual insurance carrier, exclusively working with the 16 Wisconsin Technical Colleges. We're now in our 20th year of operation, and I've had the great pleasure of being the president and CEO of the organization. It's my third or fourth year serving as the URMIA parliamentarian. So I'm just delighted to be here at Indiana University and to be with you this afternoon, Teresa.
Teresa Ransdell: Well, thanks for all of you coming and we're excited to have you here. And let's talk a little bit about member benefits and URMIA's role with those. While you're all working at institutions, your roles in institutions themselves are very different. So I'm thinking what you get from URMIA membership and the benefit that's most valuable to you may also be different. Steve, let's start with you and you get a two-part question. What value do you get from URMIA as president of a consortium of institutions? And also what is a value to the community colleges that are part of your consortium?
Steve Stoeger-Moore: That's a great question, Teresa, from the perspective of districts, mutual insurance. We get to work with colleges and universities across the United States and really utilize all of the resources from those members to help us with issues. That allows us to create a template, if you will, or a best practice to share. And oftentimes, another college or university has faced exactly or very similar issues. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There's just an abundance of resources and an amazing willingness to share. The technical colleges are rather unique. They're two-year colleges. None of them really have a bona fide risk manager. Oftentimes, it's a shared responsibility. It could be safety; it could be environmental health, campus security. So we tap into the resources available from URMIA to help each of my colleagues, if you will, do their jobs in their respective college campuses.
Teresa Ransdell: Great. So you're using URMIA to help your community colleges, then in addition to them using the URMIA resources as well and having access to it? So you can point them to the resources?
Steve Stoeger-Moore: Yes. Yes. Well said.
Teresa Ransdell: That's great. Mellany, how are you? What do you value most?
Mellany Patrong: Well, first of all, Steve, it sounds like we need a Steve in Texas, I'm so sad that it's just Wisconsin and community colleges. We could certainly use that kind of assistance in Texas.
Steve Stoeger-Moore: Well, thank you.
Mellany Patrong: But for me, it is the sense of community. URMIA’s tools and resources are absolutely amazing, but it is here that I found my people. Everywhere all around me, I'm always meeting someone who's done it and done it well, or done it and learned from it, but that willingness to share is absolutely amazing. Everybody is just a phone call or an email away. So I'm almost ready to become an URMIA commercial and say if you're not working with this group, I don't know how you're doing risk management on your campus.
Flo Hoskinson: Well said. Yeah, I believe it. I have found my people as well. My risk management folks that I'm able to connect with. My first URMIA conference was in 2015 in Minneapolis, and ever since then, I haven't missed an URMIA conference. I've tried to attend the regional conferences whenever I can. The relationships are really important to me professionally and personally, with our institutional members and the affiliates. I think one of the most valuable things I was thinking back is the Risk Management 101 conference that I took way back in 2015. And then a few years later, I was asked to help facilitate one of the sessions. And if you're a new member, I definitely recommend taking that Risk Management 101 course. That created a strong foundation for me, and I thought it was just really valuable. Again, you know, the URMIA library and the resource guide just a great tool, and the risk inventory. I can't say enough about that. That recently was updated. And so looking at that risk inventory has been really helpful for our institution.
Teresa Ransdell: And that risk inventory template allows you to go in and check off the items that pertain to your institution and then hit the magic button and everything else goes away. So then you're left with your risk register for your own institution. That's at least a starting point.
Flo Hoskinson: Right. And if you've got a new ERM program or even a seasoned ERM program, you can use that risk inventory as a checkoff. That's great.
Teresa Ransdell: Awesome. One follow up question for you, Flo, too. You mentioned that you're at an institution with a hospital. Does that become a specialty area and different resources are needed because of that medical institution, medical facility?
Flo Hoskinson: Yeah, definitely. I think with the medical school, that's something also new to me as well in health care. I worked at the University of Oregon for six years in higher ed and focused on the risk of the students and the university. And now I've been at OHSU for 3 years and health care, and the changes with, you know, HIPAA and all of the regulations, that's definitely something that I've taken on as well. So, it's been busy.
Teresa Ransdell: And that's another area that, again, the URMIA community can help collaborate.
Flo Hoskinson: Yes, and in fact, I am hosting a roundtable, and that is, I think, December 14th. So, it's for schools with hospitals. So, hopefully, folks will attend that.
Teresa Ransdell: Great. Okay, a question for all three of you again. If someone were to ask you to give three adjectives that describe URMIA, what would your three words be? Mellany, do you want to start us?
Mellany Patrong: Oh, start with me. I'd probably say educational, encouraging, and inspiring.
Steve Stoeger-Moore: Oh, nice.
Mellany Patrong: Don't ask me if you can ask me to explain, but inspiring is my favorite because, inspiring and motivational are my favorites because you learn what others are doing, and if you're not, then you go home, and you figure out where you are on your campus. If that's something that's being talked about at other universities, you're now motivated or inspired to go home and figure out if it's something you should be talking about, so that you can find out if you're measuring up.
Teresa Ransdell: So, it's not just about what's going on now that's crossing your desk, but it's what you should anticipate because if it's happening on one or more campuses around the country or even around the world, the chances are-
Mellany Patrong: Sooner or later, it’s going to hit your desk.
Teresa Ransdell: Nice, Flo. How about you? Your adjectives?
Flo Hoskinson: Okay, collaborative. Of course, everything that we've talked about, all the partnerships and the networking that we've created with our association. Resilient. I think with COVID and how we pivoted towards the virtual programming, we've got strong leaders, strong members, and a great staff. And URMIA, I know because I'm on board, we're financially stable and stronger than ever before. So, we're a resilient association. And the third one, you know, now I'm thinking about it, I think efficient, like we're really efficient. We run on a lean URMIA's staff team, and then we've got our board of directors, 20 members, and we're just a very lean group, but very efficient, looking at providing all sorts of resources for, are we almost at 3, 000?
Teresa Ransdell: We are so close to 3,000. Okay. But we'll get there before the end of 2023.
Flo Hoskinson: That’s right.
Teresa Ransdell: Steve, how about your adjectives?
Steve Stoeger-Moore: Three adjectives. I think resources comes to mind, although that's not an adjective. But resources because there's such an amazing availability and variety of resources available. The ask Lou button has never let me down. Never. I think collegial comes to mind as well. It's such a wonderful organization where there's opportunities to learn from others and the amazing amount of sharing that's happening at all the conferences, for example, that Flo mentioned before. Always an opportunity for sharing. And the third thing I would, I guess, highlight is welcoming. When you go to Urmia, you are never alone. There's always opportunities for networking. There's always opportunities to speak with someone about issues that may be peculiar to your particular organization. But I always find URMIA to be extraordinarily welcoming.
Teresa Ransdell: Nice. I like those adjectives. All nine of them. Plus, I think you threw in some extra words here and there.
Flo Hoskinson: I threw in some extra words there.
Teresa Ransdell: But we'll take them. We love those. Well, this has been a fun conversation today, and I want to thank Mellany, Steve, and Flo for joining me to talk about URMIA membership. And that's a wrap for this edition of URMIA Matters.
