Timothy Zercher 0:00

Well, Steven, thank you so much for joining. We really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule.

Steven Schiff 0:04

Tim, thank you for this opportunity to share a few things with you and your audience.

Timothy Zercher 0:09

Absolutely. Absolutely. We're excited. So, first up, if you don't mind, tell me how you got into this field. I know you've had a long career in and across the global sales and marketing and entrepreneurship, but what kind of pulled you into this space?

Steven Schiff 0:23

I've always been really anxious to learn more about the medical side of things and how those things all operate together. So for me, it was just really when I was asked to come on board as a board member, I was kind of excited about it. Plus, I'm going to be honest with you, it gave me the opportunity to tie in with a medical clinic in case there was anything I ever needed medically. Out really well. Right away, I was very popular in the area, and I was pretty well known in the area where we had lived and started this operation. And quite honestly, they asked me to be chairman of the board, and I was very thrilled with that opportunity. And gosh, we're going on six years now that I've been chairman of the board. Wow. So that is with some incredible growth.

Timothy Zercher 1:09

Yeah, no cap, no kidding, no kidding. Well, I mean, I think the whole East Texas community has seen a lot of growth. So it makes sense that the organization needs to grow with it, right?

Steven Schiff 1:18

Yes, sir.

Timothy Zercher 1:19

Yeah. So you've worked with organizations on growth and transformation. Where do you think leaders often misstep when they're trying to scale and trying to expand into new markets?

Steven Schiff 1:29

I think the most important thing for people to understand is the fact that you always have to rely on the relationships that you have. It doesn't matter if you're in the business of consumer products, where it is basically my background. But more importantly, it's developing these relationships that last over time, whether it's in the consumer products business or it's a patient. Like we've been very fortunate that developing these relationships with patients that want to come back and be part of exactly what the organization is all about, because they get this wonderful care. They get people that really care. They have a place to go to that normally they couldn't go to. Because in our location, we see patients regardless of their ability to pay. So it's kind of fascinating to see how that growth happens and how people really become really attuned to the help that they get, but more important, building the relationship with the provider.

Timothy Zercher 2:32

Yeah, that makes complete sense. That makes complete sense. And I know that you also balance business leadership with the more community healthcare side. What have you learned about building businesses that are both profitable and meaningful? And I say profitable even though I know you work with a number of nonprofits right now, but they still need to be solvent, right? So how do you balance that?

Steven Schiff 2:57

Again, I think it goes back to building relationships. I think it's I can give you the best example. So when we first started the clinic, for example, we had a very big payer mix that included a lot of Medicaid patients. So we were being reimbursed at $28 a visit. Now, I could put that $28 into context for you, something I think we all can relate to. $28 per patient visit did not pay for the tissue paper that they would sit on when they were being examined. At that time, and it's changed obviously with all the things that are going on with the economy, but six years ago, that roll of tissue paper cost us close to $200. And we were getting reimbursed at $28 per visit. So through the process of going through just a family care medical clinic to the point of becoming an FQHC clinic, which is a federally qualified healthcare center, it was a really difficult process to go through. It wasn't easy. It took us over 18 months to go through it. We had to go through some very stringent planning. We had to go through some very stringent analysis. At one point, we were all very frustrated with that process. But I don't believe that we would have been where we are today without going through that process and building the relationships with the organizations that we work with today to maintain our certification or our designation as an FQHC. So just to put that into perspective, at that time we were getting $28 per visit. Today we get a little over $300 per visit. Find the face with the tissue paper. We now can afford the tissue paper, which I still hating on every time I go there.

Timothy Zercher 4:52

Which I understand. I understand. So as your organization has grown, what have you found is the hardest part about growing the team itself?

Steven Schiff 5:00

There are so many difficult hardships that happen along the way, but we have an incredible staff, which I think is really key. Our CEO has been with us for six years that I still don't understand how he's maintained his level of patience and other things with going through all these things that have been going on, because it seems like everywhere that we go down, every path that we take, sometimes there's a roadblock there. But since we opened six years ago, we've grown our facilities now. We're on our third site that we have that's available. We have one that's in Gumbarrel City, which you probably have never heard of. Sounds like a cool place, but no. It is. And despite what you think, nobody runs around with guns that we know of. But honestly, we have one in Gumbarrel, we have one in Athens, and we just opened our third location in May last year in Canton, Texas. Roughly, we've seen over 43,000 patients in our facilities, and we maintain roughly about 15,000 patients on a regular basis. That's incredible. So we're providing all of the things that people need, again, regardless of their ability to pay.

Timothy Zercher 6:16

Absolutely. So outside of word of mouth, what have you found works best when it comes to both client acquisition and probably more importantly, in your guys' case, talent acquisition?

Steven Schiff 6:30

Yeah. Well, from a talent acquisition standpoint, we've also been very fortunate. We built a partnership with UT Health, which has been an incredible partnership. We've opened up a residency program. We now have a rotating 24 residents that rotate on an every three-year basis. So as four graduate, we get four new ones. And here's the most important thing that I can tell you about the residency program. And I don't want to take up a lot of time on it, but more importantly, with the residency program, the first time that we announced that we were going to have a residency program, we received over 600 applications in small town East Texas. Year two that we had it, we had over 800 applications. And this past year, we had close to a thousand applications applying for positions. And the whole thought behind this and statistics will tell you that if you bring in doctors that are trained in a rural town, they will stay within a 200-mile radius. And so far, out of the resonance that we've had, they are now, we now have two full-time providers that have joined our staff. So building it outside, besides word of mouth, we are so active in the community. We attend every opportunity to speak about the clinic, to share the results about the clinic, to offer everybody services within that environment. We covered the whole gamut. We started a program, Tim, which I'm very proud of, where we have diabetic patients that have never been seen. Now we're seeing them on a regular basis. Not only are we seeing them, but we're educating them to improve their life. I think that word of mouth travels by the successes that we're able to have.

Timothy Zercher 8:23

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate you sharing some of your insights and I appreciate the work that you and your team are doing. I know you're saving lives in a lot of cases.

Steven Schiff 8:33

Please feel free to reach out to East Texas Community Clinic. Go visit our website. It's it's eastexascc.org. We're there to serve the community. We're there to serve people that desperately need help. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Steven. Bye bye.