Anna Taylor Focuses on Quality, Not Quantity

Ever since Anna Taylor joined the Army National Guard in 2007, the military has played a central role in her life. Taylor rose to the rank of medical NCO and healthcare specialist during her ten years of service, which included a deployment to Afghanistan. As a member of an experimental program called the Female Treatment Team, she was embedded with Special Forces units.

“I did medical engagements focusing on women and children. I did daily clinic and responded to local national emergencies and went on military operations with the ODA [Operational Detachment Alpha],” Taylor says.

The military gave Taylor focus and a career path. “The military was instrumental in helping me find my way and become a responsible, conscientious adult. It’s where I learned how to lead people. It was where my initial interest in healthcare began, especially as I moved into leadership roles and found out that I loved the operations side of things,” she says.

Today, Taylor serves as senior director, ambulatory care, at Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

While still in the Guard, Taylor earned a master’s in healthcare administration and landed a postgraduate fellowship at the Houston VA. In 2022, she joined Summit Pacific Medical Center in Elma, Washington, where she oversaw ambulatory operations for primary care, MAT, urgent care, family medicine residency, and specialty services.

In 2024, Taylor transitioned to Sky Lakes Medical Center. She manages seventeen clinic locations, thirteen specialties, and a cancer treatment center. She also leads primary care redesign and multiple facility upgrades.

“We manage some patients in primary care that we see once a year, when we should see them once a month. You just do as much as you can when you have them there.”

Anna Taylor

Sky Lakes is a community-owned hospital with 176 beds serving a 10,000-square-mile area in south-central Oregon and northwest California. It includes the Sky Lakes Cancer Treatment Center and Cascades East Family Medicine Clinic and residency program. Its campus hosts medical specialties including OB-GYN, general surgery, endocrinology, neurology, rheumatology, neurology, ENT, dermatology, cardiology, radiation oncology, medical oncology, wound care, and behavioral health, all of which operate independently.

Currently, Taylor and her team are in the midst of Project 2030, a five-year strategic plan with several pillars. Taylor is responsible for the specialty and primary care pillars. Her goal is to continue to offer appropriate services while eliminating or reducing those not currently adding value or advancing the mission of the organization.

Because of the enormous area that Sky Lakes services, she hopes to expand the hospital’s offerings. “We manage some patients in primary care that we see once a year, when we should see them once a month. You just do as much as you can when you have them there,” says Taylor. Some Sky Lakes patients travel seventy-five miles over a mountain pass for care.

Since her arrival at Sky Lakes, Taylor has shifted the hospital’s focus from quantity to quality by enabling teams to act proactively, evaluate data, and provide care to patients when they need it most. “That’s part of our big push to expand the footprint of primary care,” Taylor says. “We estimate there’s roughly 10,000 to 12,000 patients in our immediate metro area who don’t have primary care. We want to make sure we can get them in, get them seen, and keep them connected to their healthcare system.”

As part of Sky Lakes’s primary care expansion, the medical center is transitioning into care teams and shifting to a population health management model. “We’ve entered a lot of value-based contracts, and most of them are now capitated,” Taylor says, meaning that providers charge patients a fixed fee.

Over the past year, the clinic has grown exponentially. “Just since I came on board in May, we’ve brought on two physicians and eight APs. We have seven signed on to come on in the next year. It’s going to be a big primary care expansion,” Taylor says.

“Fathom has been honored to partner with Anna and the Sky Lakes team as they continue to transform their primary care model to improve care for their community,” says Laurie Le Moine, vice president and senior principal consultant at Fathom. “Anna brings a positive energy and empowers the team to ideate, co-create, and bring change together while remaining patient centered.”

Several directors and managers from a variety of departments report to Taylor, and they all have the same goal. “We’re making sure that across the scope of ambulatory care, we are focused on value-based,” Taylor explains. “We’re streamlining patient flow and access, both with primary care and specialty, making sure primary care is doing as much as they can within the primary care setting and with the broadest scope.”

After experiencing the strictly hierarchical leadership style military commanders employ, known as “power distance,” Taylor takes a thoughtful leadership approach. It’s more suitable for leading civilians and makes her more approachable.

“I want people to feel like they can give me a little grief from time to time, because that says that people feel comfortable around me. That’s important,” Taylor says. “You have to treat people like they are mature adults who want to do well and approach them with that mindset. You need to care about people. They need to understand that you are interested in helping them grow.”

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