David Williams, Organizational Systems

David Williams

Organizational Systems

Ten years ago Charlotte, North Carolina (Mecklenburg County), had a public ambulance system that was struggling. Response times were a major issue and minutes can make the difference between life and death, so they called in so they called in consultants to revamp it top to bottom.

Today, Mecklenburg EMS Agency is one of the nation's models of best practice, with more than 100 consecutive months of on-time responses and top quality care.

David Williams is pretty proud: a PhD student in Organizational Systems at Saybrook, he was a paramedic in Charlotte when the system was reorganized, and now works with the consulting firm that led its transformation. He advises communities across North America, and is widely acknowledged as one of the top experts in Emergency Medical Services Systems in the country … and says his studies at Saybrook have been an essential part of that.

"I got into Saybrook because a colleague and mentor of mine – Mike Taigman was already an OS student there, and he spoke so passionately about it that I went to check out their PhD program," David remembers. "I looked at a lot of programs, but I applied to Saybrook because the curriculum and learning model was solid and the faculty answered every question I threw at them. Saybrook and the OS faculty have been wonderful in helping me blend work and school in a way that's made each more effective. The OS faculty, especially Program Chair Nancy Southern, were also very influential in enabling me to land the EMS consulting job I have today by supporting and encouraging me to apply my studies in my professional environment."

It was an accident that he got interested in EMS.."I was in boarding school, and at the time my two main interests were: swimming and lifeguarding, and playwriting and poetry," David says, chuckling. "My guidance counselor didn't think my folks would think playwriting would be a good use of their investment in me, so she tried to steer me towards medical school by connecting me with the volunteer fire department."

It didn't work out that way. "I was more interested in the fact that they gave me a "Kojak light" that looked really cool on my old Saab as I drove through town responding to calls," he remembers. "When you're 18 doing emergency response is really exciting: your beeper goes off and you put your light on your car and people get out of the way and maybe you save a life. There's also a real sense of purpose and accomplishment"

It didn't turn him into a doctor, but going to college was mandatory in his family, he went to a university, got certified as a paramedic, and got a bachelors and masters degree from two of the nation's earliest emergency medical services management programs.

He's been a licensed paramedic ever since, and is still proud of the work he did on the street and lives he saved each day on the ambulance. But, eventually, he wanted to help people on a larger scale. "I wasn't being challenged anymore," he admits, "and I wanted to be able to help more people by improving the quality of the system and processes that influenced their care."

That lead him to Saybrook, where he researches the obstacles to patient centric EMS system design. Now, by improving the way EMS systems run, he's saving even more lives from coast to coast.

His goal now is to help the health care industry realize that health care needs to be thought of from the standpoint of the patient, not the institution. It's about designing systems and processes that serve people, improve health, and save lives.

"If we make improvement in the health care system that center around people, survivability rates go up, costs go down, and quality is enhanced," he says. "The faculty at Saybrook is great about letting me think differently about my field and applying those ideas, and now the work that I do can make a dramatic difference in the lives of others. That's rewarding and valuable to me."