Latest / Home Health Revealed (+Palliative and Hospice) / Growth, Grit, and Scaling Success

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Growth, Grit, and Scaling Success · Home Health Revealed (+Palliative and Hospice)

• 0:03
  Speaker A: Welcome to Home Health Revealed, the podcast for home health and hospice leaders who want to stay connected to the industry and ahead of what's next.
• 0:10
  Speaker B: I am Greg Davis. I am the owner and president of business operations for Patriot Home. We are a skilled home health and hospice company. We've been in the market for 14 years. Literally started with binders in a room in an 8 by 10 room. Had no idea what we were doing. I had a background in healthcare administration. I ran a nursing home way back when. I left that in, oh my gosh, 2004. Hard to believe it's been that long. Yeah. But I pivoted and went into sales and marketing. So I was in pharmaceutical sales, medical device sales, and then we started Patriot. So it came out of basically the desire and dream. My brother and I had owned our own business, so we actually started in. Hilarious. Now, for some reason, we decided to go and import export. So dumb. I read this book on China. I think it was called China, Inc. And it was about import export. You know, when all the goods from China started in our market here in the states. And so we bought a bunch of goods. And I had a background in sales and marketing, so I could sell things and didn't really work out as I had planned. However, you know when they say this in business, every failure, you learn a ton. Yep. And we did. And we kind of took that knowledge and the failure and pivoted. And then I'm an RN and he's a pt, had a background in home health. I'd done home health. My wife was working in home health, too. So why didn't you just do that from the beginning? I don't know. But we ended up starting Patriot in 2000. I'm sorry, 2014, or I'm sorry, 2011 is when you filled out the 855. In 2012, we were billable and just started to scale and build infrastructure. We were doubling the size of the business for a while. So it's been a great ride. It's been fun. And as we were talking about before we got on, Mike, you know, we have a large presence in Northeast Ohio.
• 2:14
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 2:16
  Speaker B: And we acquired an agency in the southwest part of the state a little over a year ago. So we're in Cincinnati, moving up through Dayton. And then as we discussed, looking at, you know, we've taken a look at our leadership structure. We revised that. All the owners are on board of directors now. We have Kevin root, who's our COO, and then we have Executive Vice President Jody McHenry. And then her team. And we're really interestingly at this conference starting to really think about using technology more AI, more as it relates to quality, making our clinicians visits better and easier for them with ambient documentation which we're using now, which is awesome. It's actually working really well. Good. You know, everything down to, you know, looking at our non clinical infrastructure, you know, we built so fast and scaled so fast, it was like just starting to hammer up two by fours, you know. And now we're like, okay, let's take a breath. Let's figure out how many people do we actually need in the back office to do X, Y or Z tasks. And then once we can figure out the secret sauce on that, we're hoping by the end of this year, then we'll start looking at the next thing. But it's been, it's been a wild ride. But it's been fun. It's very engaging. My role has changed 15 times literally since you know, we started in the very beginning. So it is true what they say, you know, an entrepreneur, you have to, you have to have fortitude. Just keep. Because you're gonna make mistakes every day, you're gonna do stupid things every day, need to push through those stupid things, learn, don't make those mistakes and just keep marching forward.
• 4:02
  Speaker A: So when you say new things next year, is that new acquisitions, what does that mean for you?
• 4:08
  Speaker B: You know, I'm not sure yet. We're actually, Kevin, the COO and I are actually going through our five to ten year plan now. What does that look like? It's going to be fluid. Obviously what we learned with acquisitions is we didn't know what we were doing. It was our first one.
• 4:24
  Speaker A: That's the best way to go about it.
• 4:26
  Speaker B: Right, Right. It's like fire, ready, aim. You know. Anyway, so the acquisition kind of fell in our lap. Long story fell in our lap. We evaluated it, due diligence. We had to have the acquisition inked within 60 days, which in the acquisition world was really fast.
• 4:43
  Speaker A: Yep, that's a speedy acquisition.
• 4:44
  Speaker B: They were losing a lot of money, so they wanted out quick. So it was like 60 days, take it or leave. Ended up, they were in pretty good shape financially. They were losing a lot of money. Right. To your thing. Huge AR problems. It was all billing. They had good referral networks, good growth. It's just they did not know how to bail and do the auths and all that legwork. So we got in there and we like to say we patriotized all that stuff pretty quick. We had them in the black within 60 days after we took over.
• 5:19
  Speaker A: That's a great success story.
• 5:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. We have a great team. And as an owner, it was really cool to see all your leaders step up, go to Cincinnati, train the new team, and really own that. But we made a lot of mistakes too. But we learned from those. So in answer to your question, in a very long winded way, I'm not sure, because we've started things and we've acquired things. Now there's pros and cons to each. You know, when you start the thing, you make the thing in your image. Yep, that's pretty cool. But it is expensive. I mean, people think acquisitions are expensive. Starting things are expensive too. Yeah. You know, we started a hospice four or five years ago and we had a lot of money in that, you know, starting that thing. If you can get acquisitions at the right price, they make a lot of sense. It's just that a lot of times you have to rip down infrastructure and rebuild it, which is no easy task when you're dealing with people because you're changing behaviors, habits.
• 6:22
  Speaker A: And when it's things like billing from the front end, even with those eligibilities and auths, if you can come in quickly like you did and quote, unquote, patriotize it, then yeah, I would say that's a huge win. Especially if the agency has a good reputation. They do have good referral sources. Those referral sources don't know one way or another if you're getting paid well for those things, but that's what creates the sustainability for the business. So you. You may have just struck a good.
• 6:50
  Speaker B: I hope so. I hope so. It's having referral sources in the book of business is a good thing, but it all predicated upon what your reputation is in the community too.
• 7:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 7:02
  Speaker B: I mean, you can't ever forget that. You know, what's the perception in the community of what you're doing currently with this organization? And not that that's insurmountable. You can certainly change that and rebrand and all that good stuff. We're in the midst of doing too. We didn't have a bad reputation in the community is not what I'm saying, but certainly something to consider.
• 7:19
  Speaker A: And Patriot does have a good reputation, so why not make it a part of the Patriot fam?
• 7:23
  Speaker B: We certainly try. We certainly try.
• 7:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you and your brother have a lot of grit. That is what. That is what I say I think about when I talk to you. If it's that willingness to figure it out, try, try again, which is I think we're in a world where you have access to information, you have access to a lot of things. The more and more I see, I admire people who take the information or take the opportunity and do something about it.
• 7:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think you hit it on the head. It's grit, and I call it fortitude. Grit, same thing. But, you know, isn't that the difference between successful people and not. It's just the willingness to keep. Keep going, keep on going. I wish I were the super smart guy that got everything the first time. That's not the way God made me, but he gave me a lot of drive. My wife says I'm a maniac of that. But. But it's a blessing and a curse for sure.
• 8:21
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 8:22
  Speaker B: Can distract you at times, but can also keep you, keep you on track with mission.
• 8:27
  Speaker A: And you guys have now had quite a bit of time under your belt. You've seen a lot of change. You existed through the COVID years. You're talking about a five, ten year plan. And I think a lot of agencies had a five, 10 year plan and during some of that time period really got derailed or had to change course pretty quickly. And so that tenacity through all of that helped you through, I'm sure.
• 8:51
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It's leadership too. And it's not my leadership, it's all my leaders in the organization. During the COVID thing, we actually thrived through that. I mean, we were out seeing patients and doing what we do, and we brought all our clinical staff into a giant room when everything was brand new and we made a team decision to see our patients, and everyone was invested and we really had no problems in that because, I mean, everyone says it, but I mean, patients should come first.
• 9:18
  Speaker A: It says a lot about your leadership too. And I know this about you as well. You empower your leaders within your organization.
• 9:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're trying to do a better job of that too. You know, it's where we just went through some leadership training. And so I got the leadership training bug now. And it is Jocko Willock. It's extreme ownership. I'm reading that book now.
• 9:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, I read it.
• 9:45
  Speaker B: Okay, well, you understand, it's extremely simple. It's just own your world. Own your world. No excuses. Make it happen. So, you know, being a military guy, that sort of thing resonates with me. So we're gonna try to figure out a way to pigeon that into our leadership. But on the other hand, like we were talking about before we got on air here, you need to have the right Data. Because how can you hold someone accountable or hold themselves accountable if there's not good data to kind of over time to map out progress? We're in the midst of creating all those things now to take our thing to the next level.
• 10:20
  Speaker A: Well, I'm going to switch here and talk about your involvement in the Ohio Council, because you have become kind of a face, a voice of the Ohio Council. You're very involved. Talk to me about what you do with your organization.
• 10:33
  Speaker B: Well, so I came many moons ago. I was in the nursing home industry, and I was a part of the Georgia Healthcare Association. I was down in Atlanta.
• 10:43
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 10:43
  Speaker B: And I learned the power of trade associations. You know, I'm kind of a social guy.
• 10:51
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 10:51
  Speaker B: So I see the power of networking.
• 10:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:53
  Speaker B: You know, meeting people like you, learning from you and beyond. So that was when we started the business, and we actually had money to do things. That was one of the first things we did, is we joined the Ohio Council. And once I joined, the previous executive director, pretty shortly thereafter approached me about being on the board, which I did, and I'm really glad I did. It's one of those doorways that life puts before you. You're like, oh, gosh, I don't want to do that. I'm so busy. But just go through the doorway. And I did. And I got to meet some absolutely amazing people, networked with amazing people that helped me daily with my mission at my business. And then secondly, we started our own network, the Ohio Community at Home Network, too. It's kind of an offshoot of ochch, and it's a billing network. We have contracts with all the Medicare Advantage plans, the MCOs, and dual eligibles in Ohio, which is awesome. So if you're a agency owner, operator, it's a plug and play. If you plug into us, it's a nominal price relative to the value that you get. You can bill everybody pretty much instantaneously. And not only that, but Katie Eisel, who I believe you interviewed as well.
• 12:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, we just talked to her.
• 12:06
  Speaker B: Okay. I know she sounded really smart and said smart things. She's very smart, and she is at your fingertips. And I can tell you, I say this all the time. We used to have revenue cycle hiccups for this reason or that reason. You understand those in your line of work, Medicare Advantage changes this thing, and they didn't tell anybody, and, you know, you have problems. Well, used to be that might be three months before we got paid from just. I'm not gonna name any names, but plug in whichever one you like, and we had one of those situations a couple years back, and whereas before, it would have been months before we got paid, called Katie, interestingly, other members of OCHN have already reported that information to her as well. She made a few calls and I was getting paid in, like, three days.
• 12:50
  Speaker A: Yep. That's the power of it.
• 12:51
  Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. It is amazing. It's kind of. It's like the wizard of Oz pulling the curtain back and like, oh, there you are.
• 12:57
  Speaker A: Oh, there's Katie Eisel.
• 12:58
  Speaker B: There's Katie Eisel.
• 12:59
  Speaker A: She's the one doing it.
• 13:01
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it's really. It's. It's amazing. So that is a plug.
• 13:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:05
  Speaker B: You should join ochn. It's amazing. So.
• 13:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you for all the work that you're doing with the Ohio Council.
• 13:11
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 13:11
  Speaker A: And with Patriot. I'm excited to see five year plan and next year, the excitement that is maybe mergers and acquisition, maybe something. Knowing you, it may. You may go back to imports and do something completely imported.
• 13:26
  Speaker B: Home health or export.
• 13:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it'll be great. But thank you so much for sitting down with me. I appreciate it.
• 13:32
  Speaker B: Thank you, Hannah.