‘79 MHA alum Marvin O’Quinn reflects on his 40-year career leading health systems. (Photo by Elizar Mercado)
Flowers are common in hospitals, but Marvin O’Quinn will always remember a particular bouquet brought to the Fresno, California facility he managed.
A woman brought flowers for the hospital staff after her daughter had been treated there. O’Quinn assumed this was because the daughter’s treatment had turned out well. When he asked the chief nursing officer about this, they told him the daughter had died in the hospital. O’Quinn was shocked that a mother who had lost her child at the hospital would be so generous to the staff. The chief nursing officer shared that the mother said it was the way her daughter had been treated that had been so meaningful.
“It's because of the way that she died and the fact that we took care of her, in a way that allowed the parents and the family dignity and care,” O’Quinn said.
These moments have defined O’Quinn’s 40-year career in health care management, where he led strategy and operations for hospitals across the globe. He’s built hospitals in China, negotiated hospital equity contracts in the Middle East, and developed Airlift Northwest’s air ambulance system in Seattle. But he has found that it was these relationships with patients and his colleagues which were the most rewarding experiences of his career.
O’Quinn is a ‘79 Master of Health Administration (MHA) graduate of the University of Washington School of Public Health, an experience he said shaped his trajectory of leading innovative health care systems and putting people at the center of this work.
“Health care is a tremendous place to work,” O’Quinn said. “I've been able to get up every morning recognizing that I'm doing something that's making a difference in somebody else's life.”
O’Quinn’s desire to help people stemmed from his experiences growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s. As a Black student attending a predominantly Black high school, he saw how limited he and his classmates' opportunities were, compared to his wealthier, white peers across the city. At chess tournaments in Palos Verdes or Beverly Hills, he saw the buildings, books, and resources these students had access to that he and his classmates didn’t.
“I grew up in a disadvantaged community,” O’Quinn said. “What was open to us was very, very narrow, because of who we were and where we grew up...I just came out of that community thinking that if I could do something that could help other people like myself, then I would.”
After attending a summer program as a high schooler at University of California, Los Angeles, O’Quinn enrolled there as an undergraduate. He was on a pre-med track, but wasn’t sure if he wanted to be a doctor. After transferring to the University of Washington, earning a biology degree, and volunteering in Seattle-area hospitals, he found his calling in helping people who were in their most vulnerable moments in these large systems.
That’s how he decided to earn his MHA from the UW School of Public Health. O’Quinn wanted the skills to run large hospital systems. Working closely with UW faculty, O’Quinn says he was able to learn the skills and expertise needed to strategically manage all the facets of finance, operations, and market development for health care systems while prioritizing service of vulnerable communities.
O’Quinn said the leader of the UW MHA program looked out for him, and gave him the confidence and skills to be successful.
“When I finished the [MHA] program, I probably felt as good about myself as a person in terms of my ability to be successful in this world as I ever had,” O’Quinn said. “What the program did for me was give me a foundation to build on that was solid. The rest was up to me to figure out how to use that foundation to drive my career forward.”
O’Quinn recently retired as the President and COO for CommonSpirit Health, a faith-based, nonprofit health care ministry operating in 140 hospitals and more than 1,500 care sites across 21 states. He served as the COO of Dignity Health, the president and chief executive officer of Jackson Health System (Miami) and executive vice president and chief operating officer of Atlantic Health System (Florham Park, N.J.). He also held senior positions with New York Presbyterian Health System, Providence, Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Health Center (Portland, Oregon.), Valley Children’s Hospital (Fresno, California.) and Harborview Medical Center (Seattle, Washington).
His background inspired not only the work O’Quinn did, but his drive to achieve. Being one of the few Black people in academia in the 1970s or in health care settings with predominantly white leadership, O’Quinn said he felt like he didn’t always belong.
“I've always felt like I wasn't quite good enough,” O’Quinn said. “I had to work that much harder, in order to make sure that people saw me for what I could give to the organization. If you honor [that feeling], it's a hell of a motivator. It will drive you. It'll push you.”
More than half of O'Quinn's career has been spent with institutions that prioritize care for low-income populations. An MHA degree was particularly helpful for this because hospitals are not like other businesses, O’Quinn said. They are instead both a business and a social service. The people who the hospital serves may not be able to pay, or may have insurance that will greatly underpay.
“You've got to understand how to develop programs that are going to allow you to serve those populations and still be financially solvent,” O’Quinn said.
This type of work involves caring for populations beyond what is billable. Some of the most meaningful work O’Quinn remembers is when his team worked on an initiative to help prevent human trafficking. At the health care organization, they taught emergency room physicians and staff across 35 hospitals how to look for signs of patients who were being trafficked. This program was able to intervene and rescue people who had been trafficked and get them help and successful careers.
“That’s all part of running a hospital,” O’Quinn said. “You’ve got to be a leader, not just inside the hospital, but a leader in your community.”
A career in health care management has been endlessly rewarding for O’Quinn because of the relationships with the people he serves. O’Quinn also encourages public health students to consider careers in health care because of the variety of roles, workplaces, and opportunities available.
“There's so many aspects to [health care]: the for-profit side, these lovely startup companies that are doing collaborative care and AI, to the traditional nonprofit side,” O’Quinn said. “You can do your whole career here and grow and advance; it's up to what you want to do, because the opportunities are there to do well financially and to do well by your community.”