Timothy Zercher 0:00

Well, Anthony, thank you so much for joining. I really appreciate you taking time. Thanks, Tim. I'm honored to be here. Absolutely. So, what first inspired you to pursue a career in healthcare? And how did that transition from kind of clinical practice to more of so what you do now, which is much more executive leadership, happen?

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Tim, great question. My origin story began actually as a patient. I had an injury and experienced care that was suboptimal and then ended up having to have a revision surgery and had excellent care on all sides of my experience. And that inspired me to get into healthcare and become a clinician after having a business background with the idea in North Star of everyone deserves a great patient experience.

Timothy Zercher 0:40

I love that. I love that. And I'm sure that's that that's kept you inspired to maintain that quality of service.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

That's correct. And I started off as a clinician and took that responsibility to heart to take care of my patients. And then as I grew in my leadership role, I knew that I had a wider sphere of influence and helping lead others to continue down the path of creating a great experience as I progressed in my career. And as I continue to progress in my career at an executive officer level, was really designing the systems to support the providers, to support great quality care and taking care of the patients and just driving that efficiency for those that are in the field working with the patients day to day.

Timothy Zercher 1:22

I love that. I love that. So you've over your career now, you've scaled healthcare organizations across more than a hundred different locations, I think multiple times. What is the biggest mistake that you see leaders make when expanding, when scaling operations quickly?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yeah, I think that's just it, Tim. When you grow fast and your systems aren't ready to adopt or built accordingly, you end up having a little bit of strain. And basically, you know, there's a ton of patients to be seen. People deserve those great experiences. And if your systems aren't set up, you run the risk of putting a lot of strain on the providers and also that patient experience. The way around it is really just becoming a little bit more scripted, creating playbooks, making sure that you have the right leadership and team with the right purpose. And that's critical to having sustainable growth and intentional growth as well.

Timothy Zercher 2:11

Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. That makes complete sense. And I know at Avron you've helped expand multiple different clinical programs to multiple locations and improve employee retention at the same time. What is one strategy or tactic that you've used that kind of makes the most difference when scaling, when creating all of that, all of that improvement inside of an organization while growing?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, Tim, in my organization, Avron Operating Partners, really I look to define what matters, advance intentionally, and then elevate the outcome. The real path of that is creating the patient journey and mapping it along the way and driving efficiencies along all the departments on those touch points to ensure that there's a smooth patient experience from the beginning when they first contact the company to the time in the clinic, to the output of what the billing cycle looks like. And so for me, the key success is designing systems that really map that patient journey and allowing the teams to come together to with purpose to really elevate that patient experience because everyone on the team has an important touch point to creating that overall patient experience from beginning to end.

Timothy Zercher 3:21

Yeah. Oh, that makes complete sense. And so you are in a fairly competitive space with a lot of other consultancies out there and a lot of, and I think almost every industry that your clients are in are also in very competitive spaces. How does your team go about gaining new clients? What works best right now?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, I think one of the most important things is just a note of what we're talking about, that patient experience. As a clinician, I as I mentioned, I took that to heart. And really it was easy for me as I led marketing teams to have my experience that I delivered to them or my team's experience go speak volumes and represent who we are and how we did what we did. I think that's the largest avenue of success. Not to mention this day and age, when people are looking at reviews, that word of mouth is critical. I always was very proud to say the team that I had in my very first clinic that I opened up continued to see 50% word of mouth, and patients would drive past five to six other locations to come see the team that was there taking great care of them. So for me, it's really just creating that great patient experience and the systems to support.

Timothy Zercher 4:23

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And if you do that well enough, then it'll result in more clients by itself.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

That's correct. And then from an advisory perspective, I work with founder-led businesses, and that's where the systems and scalability and putting those pieces in place really help providers that are truly aiming to take great care of the patients have just the backbone of the business in order to really have that great throughput with keeping the holy grail of taking great care of the patients. As providers, we get into the business to serve others and really take care of them. When the business side of this day and age is extremely hard and challenging.

Timothy Zercher 4:57

Absolutely. Absolutely. Over the next year, what do you think is going to be the biggest challenge that you and your team are going to be tackling?

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, I really think keeping people energized and focused as the pressures rise, there's a lot of demand in order to keep the business running healthy. And so reimbursement pressures, for example, create a lot of admin burden. And so, really, the idea is having good operational leadership that help people see around corners and really understand how to improve the systems to drive efficiency so that we can stay focused on taking care of the patients. And it's really, you know, the idea of connecting back to why are we doing the work and let's stay focused on what we're here to do versus some of that admin burden? But it's there. So we definitely want to make sure that as a leadership team, you're really helping the team that's taking care of the patients be focused and energized. And that comes with that purpose of really being patient first.

Timothy Zercher 5:52

I love that. I love that. And it makes a lot of sense. And it's definitely not going to be an easy challenge. The pressure in the industry is just increasing every day. What is the hardest function within an organization for your team right now? Is it attracting the right talent to join the team or is it attracting the right clients to serve?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

I really do think it's the talent side of it. Really, the patients are the patients, and you have to take care of the people that are coming to you for your care and your services. And so it really becomes the talent side of it. And I think that's part of really driving an organization that has efficiencies, focusing on really having great leadership in play that helps drive some of the burden away from the clinician side and ultimately keeping the clinicians focused and not taking credit care of the patients. I've seen in situations when the focus becomes not taking care of the patients, and it really becomes a fragmentation of what you're there to do. And so attracting the right people that understand that the work is hard. Anytime you're in the clinic, you're doing hard work and that you get the support that you need to truly come forward and d deliver the service that you desire to as a clinician.

Timothy Zercher 7:00

Absolutely. Absolutely. That makes complete sense. Well, thank you so much, Anthony. We really appreciate you taking time and appreciate the work that you do for for I know multiple multiple groups of clients.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, thank you. It's a pleasure meeting with you today and sharing some thoughts about what's going on in the healthcare sector.

Timothy Zercher 7:18

Thank you.