Timothy Zercher 0:00

All right, good morning, Dove. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate having you on.

Dov Berman 0:03

Thank you so much for having me.

Timothy Zercher 0:04

Absolutely, absolutely. So you're very, very experienced in the space. You're you have a lot of different roles in behavioral health. What drew you into behavioral health in the first place and ultimately into kind of more of the financial leadership role that you're in now?

Dov Berman 0:16

Yeah, so right out of uh my master's program in accounting, I started off in the nursing home space, was in the finance office there. And you know, it was great. It was it was a good industry, but I felt like there's just more than I could do. You know, behavioral health is one of the leading issues in America right now, behavioral health and substance abuse. So, you know, I wanted to do something that really could impact people and help people out in their time of need. And an opportunity came to get involved with New Vista, which is a behavioral health company based out of Ohio. And I felt it'd be a good opportunity to kind of explore it and see what I could do to make a difference.

Timothy Zercher 0:50

Absolutely. Absolutely. Makes complete sense. Makes complete sense. I think behavioral health is one of those, at least previously, I think it's getting its time in the sun now, but I think it's very, very overlooked in terms of the crisis that really that is facing the whole country.

Dov Berman 1:01

100%. We always say we're taking care of people in their most vulnerable times, you know, when someone's going through a behavioral health crisis, it's a very, very tough time. And you know, we're there to be their support and be their help to try to get them the help that they need.

Timothy Zercher 1:13

Absolutely. Absolutely. So because you're in the in the financial space, I'll ask this how do you approach building good financial systems that balance that strategic strong growth with quality of care and and patient care?

Dov Berman 1:28

Yeah. So I can tell you when I can't when I came to this, one of the things that really, really struck me was, you know, we are for-profit, but you know, everything was from the lens of the patients. You know, when I worked in previous companies and finance, it really didn't make a difference if you're selling cars, you're selling whatever you're selling, it doesn't matter. It's just what the money we're making. But I can tell you, you know, being part of this organization, we always are looking at it from the lens of what can we do best for our for our patients and how can we make sure that they're getting the care they need. But at the same time, we have to make money and and be profitable. Because ultimately, if if we can't pay our bills and pay our employees, we're not going to be able to continue to provide the great care that we're providing. So, you know, what we we try to look at is just strong financial principles, which I think is something that was lacking in the behavioral health industry. A lot of people were getting started, and you know, especially in the substance abuse area, and you know, there was just not a focus on strong financial principles. And, you know, we we do monthly operating reviews for all of our business units, really diving into what expenses are over budget, what expenses are trending higher. And you know, in behavioral health, most of the things just really around labor, making sure that you don't have too much overtime, you don't have too much bonuses. You know, it is a tough staffing environment. You know, there's not a lot of people that want to work in behavioral health, and there's definitely a lot of challenges, but really just having good systems and good software that you can really monitor that to make sure that you know your hourly wages are not getting too high, your overtime is not getting too high. And really, the expense management is something that we spend a lot of time and energy on just to make sure that we're producing the outcomes that we need to on the front end and take care of our patients. Also, we like to spend a lot of energy on having a nice therapeutic environment. We, you know, our buildings are very nice. When we go to, you know, we do a lot of conversions and we go to convert the buildings, we we try to make them look very presentable, very nice, which I think also helps a lot with the patient care. And also when you're going into the project, you know, the more that you can do on the front end, it saves you money on the long end with all the capex and things like that. So it's definitely something we try to approach when when looking at a new building and setting up systems. But labor management is really the key to success from an expense perspective. And also having good data around your revenue, really understanding what is your payer mix, where are the patients coming from, where are your clients coming from, all those things really to help paint a better picture so that you can really predict what your financial outcome is going to be at the end of the month. You know, we we try to look at mid-month and end of the month just to get a full picture so we can make good financial decisions. Do we need to spend a little bit more money here? Do we need to take a little, you know, spend a little bit less over there? And that's kind of what we've kind of built to manage the the program.

Timothy Zercher 4:07

Yeah, and it's simply since it all comes down to having good data that you can actually trust, right? 100%.

Dov Berman 4:12

And that's one of the things we implemented, I think, last year is just our a dashboard. Um we've always had a dashboard, but we really you know beefed up the dashboard. But there's so many different metrics to look at in behavioral health. So our first is just identifying what are those key metrics you want to look at on a on a daily basis and then figure out a way to consolidate those into one place. You know, every morning we get our flash report to kind of just see from a census perspective who's coming, who's going. And it's really having access to that data is super important to be able to make decisions.

Timothy Zercher 4:41

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. If you I mean, if you don't have good data, you can't make good decisions no matter no matter what, right? Even if you have all the experience in the world, if you're if you're flying blind, it doesn't really matter. 100%. Yeah. And it makes complete sense. So what are some of the biggest trends that you're seeing? We can call them trends, we can call them shifts in the behavioral health space that you think leaders should really be paying attention to right now.

Dov Berman 5:01

Yeah, I would say one of the biggest issues we're dealing with now is just getting authorization for care. You know, I don't know if it's a new trend, but it's definitely gotten much more difficult in the past few months. The criteria, all the payers are kind of really cracking down on different criteria. Even patients that really should be in the program, they're denying it or delaying getting back to us, and then you've realize you have you know five days uncovered. So that to me is right now the one of the I think the biggest challenge that we're facing is just you know being able to work with the different payers that are out there and making sure we get authorization for care. And then I would say probably the second thing is just keeping up with the staffing environment. You know, I think post-COVID, during COVID and post-COVID, this staffing has been a huge challenge. I think it's gotten better. There's definitely you definitely still feel the shortage on staffing.

Timothy Zercher 5:47

Absolutely. And I I don't know that the staffing shortage is going to go away anytime soon either. I think that's now it's probably gonna be a struggle for a while.

Dov Berman 5:54

Exactly. And getting the people that really know, getting good clinicians that can provide good care, getting nurses that don't want to work in the big med surge hospitals and want to work in you know a behavior health setting. These type of staff are just they're hard to come by. There's not a lot of them. I think there's a national shortage on clinical staff. So it's I don't know what the future holds, but that's that's definitely a challenge that we're always facing.

Timothy Zercher 6:15

Absolutely. That makes complete sense. So you've been with NuVista, I think, through a lot of some of a lot of growth and a lot of organizational shifts, right? What have you found is one of the hardest parts of growing your organization outside of, of course, recruiting?

Dov Berman 6:29

Yeah, I would say I'll go back a little bit to recruiting, but not recruiting to the you know, staff and the buildings, but getting a good corporate leadership team, I think getting true experts in the behavioral space are are hard to come by. And you know, we're very fortunate at NuVista that we've really grown a strong corporate team. And I would say we struggled with that for a couple years, but now we have like a solid team that's been with us, you know, five, six plus years. And with that stability and with those expertise, it's really allowed us to grow and expand, you know, it allowed us to look into other states. Because when you have a solid corporate foundation, it allows kind of all the buildings to be running smoothly and allows you to kind of look at growth and expansion. But when you're when you're struggling to you know deal with issues at buildings and you don't have the right expertise or people that are dedicated, you might find someone with all the expertise in the world, but they're not willing to roll up their sleeves and and drive down to a building and deal with issues, the expertise doesn't really help you. So, you know, we're fortunate that over the you know the past few years since I've been in the organization to really grow a strong, a strong team, and that's really allowed us to grow. And without them, I would say everything else is there's nothing else you can do. You know, you gotta have that strong foundation so that you can grow and and develop the organization.

Timothy Zercher 7:40

Yeah, and I I mean as a as an MBA, there's a very appealing part of that narrative to me of uh it starts with good leadership, it starts with good, good corporate leadership, and then you can build good staff and good systems and good processes and and be able to actually serve clients well.

Dov Berman 7:56

100%. And with that, you know, we were in the behavioral space, there's not a lot, you know, in substance abuse, there's a lot of EMRs out there, but on the behavior health side, they don't really exist. There's a there's a few, but none of them are perfect. But again, with having strong leadership, we were able to develop develop our own EMR, and that's really allowed us to also grow into other states because we're able to, you know, monitor things a lot closer, a lot of the regulatory components, and you know, really having staff that are experts in their craft allows you to develop things and grow, become a lot bigger organization. So that's that's been huge. And really, like you said, it all comes from the leadership, you know, the owner of the company, you know, that's what I think he prides himself on the most is developing people and and building a tight family in the organization where we all feel like we're part of the new Vista family. And I think that's that's key because you know there's a lot of jobs out there. Everyone will jump for another dollar here, another dollar there. But if you really feel like you're part of something and and you're part of a family, it makes you give a 120% all the time.

Timothy Zercher 8:54

Absolutely. And it makes you willing to stick out the the lean periods too, which always happen.

Dov Berman 8:59

100%.

Timothy Zercher 9:00

Because in a behavior off, there's always challenges.

Dov Berman 9:02

That's that's for sure.

Timothy Zercher 9:03

Always, always, always. The challenge might be different every day, but there's always there's always one.

Dov Berman 9:07

Exactly. One of our operators always says one of my favorite lines he ever said it was there's a hundred blinking lights every day in a psych hospital. Well, only one or two of them will kill you, you know. And then you should focus on that first.

Timothy Zercher 9:19

Exactly. I like that. I like that. That's it makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. So I have to ask some of these other questions because I know you're not directly in marketing, but your decisions directly influence marketing. And we are a behavioral health specialist agency, obviously. So, first one, I mean, obviously, in some of the regions you guys are in, you're in a very competitive space. How does your team go about getting the best the best outcomes in terms of actual new clients in the door? Outside of, of course, you know, basic word of mouth should always be the basis. But outside of that, what is what is what have you found is the most effective?

Dov Berman 9:51

Definitely marketing is not not my expertise. They just come to me to want to spend money and you know, I can always make the decision. But I I think it's really, you know, a couple of things. I think it's having you know good outcomes. Being a good provider is is your best marketing strategy, right? If you have a good reputation and and referral sources trust you, there's no better marketing than that. And really, you know, doing what you say you're gonna do, you know, provide the referral sources. What if they expect you to answer the phone in under three minutes, you answer the phone with under three minutes? It's really being that good partner because it's it's a partnership between you and the referral sources. But I think the other thing is is not relying on one stream of how you're getting business. You know, we have multiple strategies, whether it's boots on the ground, whether it's SEO, whether it's you know, media campaigns. Just having a full stack, I think, is helpful because sometimes the boots on the ground is bringing a lot of the business, and sometimes you have a a downturn on that, and you're getting a lot from the website referrals, and you know, then sometimes you have a media campaign that you might not see the fruits of that right away. But it gives that general awareness, going to conferences, these type of things I think allow you to kind of just be known in the market. So it's just really having a few lots of different tactics because you never know which one's gonna bring success at this point in time, and and it fluctuates over time. So it's just figuring out how to take your marketing budget and allocating it in the in the appropriate places and making sure you're touching enough places. But again, it all it really you're gonna have the best marketing team in the world, but if you're you're not doing a good patient care, it's not gonna help you, you know. No, absolutely. I think one of the things we also did is just, you know, we were fortunate enough we're have different regions, so kind of centralizing the business development department was also, I think, very valuable because it allows us kind of market new vista as a whole versus just a singular facility. And I think that's also been you know very helpful for us as a strategy, just to consolidate our efforts and have people kind of marketing regions and touching a lot more people. Absolutely.

Timothy Zercher 11:45

Well, and it goes back to good corporate leadership, right? You can have good, you can have good leadership if it's centralized, it's a lot harder to maintain a good leadership team across many, many states.

Dov Berman 11:53

And and back to data, right? BD data is you know, a lot of BD people don't like data. They just like, you know, bringing the the cupcakes and the and the donuts. But you know, the really strong BD people really have an appreciation for data and have strong data to be able to really see where the trends are. Is this referral source dropping? Is this one, you know, do we get two new referrals from this place? What do we do differently? So someone who's always looking over that data is is definitely key for successful outcomes.

Timothy Zercher 12:19

Absolutely. Absolutely. I completely agree. And it's you say you don't know marketing, but that's that is the marketing, that is the marketing playbook, right? Is you have to be in a lot of places at once because you never really know what's going to work. Even, I mean, we're specialists in the space. I can tell you four, three or four strategies that any, you know, whatever ABA or addiction treatment team can work on that'll probably generate good results, but one region, option number one will work the best, and the other region, option number three, will work the best, and another region, none of those will work, and we'll have to do something totally different because it's just different. You never know.

Dov Berman 12:49

100%. It's it's it's always evolving. Always always.

Timothy Zercher 12:52

And then the last last question is also towards the marketing, but what's one new strategy you all are considering in your business development marketing team?

Dov Berman 13:00

I think one of the things that, you know, we do most of them, so like it's not too many new ones, but uh you know, I think one thing that we new thing we did in 2025 that we had never done was um like streaming ads, you know, like on some of the streaming platforms, doing ads on those for some of our product lines. I would say we did see some success in it. Like I think we saw some more pages, but it's hard to actually tie that in to direct success from that. But that was something we never really thought about in 2025. We we started looking into and try to do some more of those type of streaming commercials.

Timothy Zercher 13:31

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Those are they're fun to do if they're executed right and they they have a lot of good impact on uh brand awareness, right? They're they're generally not so good for actual leads that day. Exactly.

Dov Berman 13:41

As a finance guy, I'm always arguing that part. But uh I know.

Timothy Zercher 13:45

I I was gonna say, I was gonna say, your marketing guy probably said that to you while you were saying, Why am I why am I cutting this big check? It's always how that goes. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Dove. We really appreciate your insights and appreciate uh some of, frankly, I think some good advice for a lot of businesses out there to start listening to.

Dov Berman 14:01

I appreciate it. And uh I'm looking forward to uh learning more about the podcast. It seems like it's very interesting and helping a lot of behavioral health leaders. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.