Tell us about yourself – what do you like to do? Where do you live? What’s your career path been?
I enjoy spending downtime with my family and enjoy golfing and skiing whenever I can find the time. I currently live in Portland Oregon, which throws most people for a loop, considering that I spent most of my time traveling to see accounts across the country and reported to New Jersey for years.
What brought you to the long term care space?
Family and fate for the most part. I was a pharmacy brat growing up. My family owned a number of retail pharmacies in the Willamette Valley in Oregon that also provided LTC services to local LTC facilities. I went off to college with a dream of getting away from pharmacy only to find out that it was calling. I spent the first part of my career working for one of the big 3 drug distributors. It was a real eye opener and I credit that job for instilling in me a focus on driving value back to the pharmacy providers.
I left the wholesaler world and took a flier on a post acute GPO that was in a turnaround mode. I really believed in the leadership and their vision of what the company could become and their dedication to providing value to the LTC pharmacy space. Over the next 12 years, we really changed the industry and built something special for the space.
How have you seen long term care change in your career and how do you see it changing in the future?
The biggest change that I have seen is the consolidation in the industry. For example, when I started in the industry a large urban market might have 8-10 LTC pharmacies servicing the area. In that same market today, there might be 1-2 pharmacy providers. There are a number of factors that drives that consolidation, but the overarching theme is that increased competition and complexity have narrowed the playing field.
I think we will continue to see the industry innovate with new business models, delivery models, technology advances, etc…. You will see the definition of LTC continue to evolve and expand as the baby boomers start to move into the market. The desire of that population segment is to remain independent as long as possible and that will drive how services are delivered in the market. I think how we perceive the LTC market today vs ten years from now will look a lot different.
What motivated you to build StatimRX?
As a byproduct of the first company we built, we saw an opportunity in the space that was clearly underserved and mismanaged. We just knew we could build something better and do it while being thoughtful to the LTC pharmacies that would be our clients.
Also, I was lucky enough to manage some great people in my old career who also became some of my best friends. This was an opportunity to reunite with some great friends and industry experts to build something really special.
What growth opportunities do you see for StatimRX?
The interesting thing about StatimRx is once you solve one problem, our clients bring us new problems to solve. For example, hospitals have the same hospital readmission disincentives as LTC facilities. One of the greatest predictors of a patient not showing up back at the hospitals is getting the patient on the right med at the right time. We are starting to help hospital pharmacies do just that.
Also, another growth opportunity for us has been using our pharmacy benefit management principles in a pharmacy provider focused manner. I think a lot of times PBM’s get a bad rep, but there are so many principles that can be supportive of our pharmacy clients. For example; we are helping self-insured pharmacy groups save on their drugs costs, helping pharmacies manage previously unmanaged or poorly managed segments of their customers like PACE and Hospice clients and helping pharmacy clients manage to client contracts.
Lastly, our healthcare delivery network is second to none. The reach and the scale of our delivery solution can provide enormous benefits for anyone in the healthcare market that has a delivery need. Our specialty is getting meds to the patient in the LTC setting, but we also can provide meds to outpatient, deliver healthcare supplies and equipment, as well as other healthcare entities. The fact that we are dedicated to the healthcare space and have taken the proper precautions to insure safe and protected healthcare deliveries is what separate us from other delivery solutions.
If you haven’t had a chance to look at our solution, we would love an opportunity to explore how we might help your organization.