By way of introduction--my name is Mark Michaud and I am the new Chief Executive Officer of CompONE Services. I look forward to working with you on strategies for furthering our partnership, improving your business performance, and navigating what promises to be the most challenging and exciting period in the history of the healthcare industry.
Unlike most of you, I am not a healthcare veteran. I come from a banking background of mergers & acquisitions and strategic business development. Much of my experience is from the late 90s and early 2000s, a period of tremendous change in the banking sector, where deregulation led to sector consolidation and changes in the way banks operated and served customers.
I imagine that healthcare reform is one of, if not the, primary business issue on your mind today. While many details remain ambiguous, several things seem inevitable:
- The total number of insured individuals, and therefore the total number of new potential patients seeking care, will increase dramatically over the next 10 years.
- The government's resolve to compel technology innovation within the system as a whole will only gather strength, ultimately improving efficiency, but at the expense of near-term cost and complexity.
- Patient outcomes and quality of care will play a more significant role in provider reimbursement.
Organizations and practices that can accept this destiny quickly, adapt their businesses, and manage within these parameters, will develop more sustainable and distinct competitive advantages.
As a relative newcomer to healthcare, I've had the opportunity to examine the industry from a more strategic, or high-level, vantage point. In banking, the repeal of legislation resulted in deregulation, while in healthcare, the creation of new legislation is resulting in re-regulation. Despite the different contexts, I see three key similarities between healthcare today and banking in the 90s, in terms of likely outcomes.
First, regulatory changes are forcing all industry participants to make educated guesses about the future, and reassess their strategic positioning. Questions such as these must be asked:
- Who do I want my customers to be?
- What should I build, buy, outsource?
- Who else is likely to survive?
Second, companies will create competitive advantages by reinvigorating focus on costs, making intelligent human and physical capital investment decisions, and employing new technologies based on long-term return on investment, survivability, and usage potential.
Finally, the industry participants themselves will change. New players, without the potential disadvantage of legacy business models, will emerge. Many existing players will determine that this is a good exit opportunity, or the right time to join forces with a partner, so consolidation will occur along the entire revenue cycle management value chain, from providers to billing companies to payers.
As a healthcare business solutions provider, CompONE must also adapt to this new environment, make long-term strategic decisions, and re-position itself to ensure success. I commit to you that CompONE is in this for the long haul, and that we will resist the temptation to focus solely on ourselves at your expense, as we recognize that this is clearly a time when you need us the most. We only succeed when you succeed.
We would love to have the opportunity to help you assess your overall strategy; to help you demystify phrases-of-the-day, like
hospital-physician alignment,
PQRI, and
guaranteed to meet meaningful use; and to re-examine where CompONE can simplify your increasingly complex back-office.
Thank you, and I look forward to participating in your success!
Mark Michaud, CEO
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