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Your Company Health
Your Company Health
Growing Your Health Practice in the Age of Private Equity
The intersection of healthcare management and patient care takes center stage as we welcome Jason Raidbard, Executive Administrator from UChicago's Department of Ophthalmology. Drawing from 22 years of healthcare experience, Jason shares how his journey transformed from pure operations—managing clinics and coordinating staff—to strategic leadership making decisions that shape entire departments.
What drives someone to dedicate their career to healthcare administration? For Jason, it began with a deeply personal experience as a child undergoing speech therapy for being tongue-tied. This formative experience revealed both human vulnerability and the profound impact of compassionate care, though his path to healthcare took an unexpected detour through city management studies before a chance encounter with a physician changed everything. The combination of building something meaningful while helping patients transition from sickness to health created the perfect career alignment.
Our conversation explores artificial intelligence's evolving role in medicine, where Jason offers a refreshingly balanced perspective. Rather than replacing physicians, current AI applications serve as supportive tools, particularly in radiology and pathology. These technologies provide valuable second opinions while allowing clinicians to maintain more personal connections with patients instead of staring at computer screens during appointments. We also discuss how preventative medicine, staff wellness, and patient accessibility might evolve over the next decade.
For physicians running private practices in today's challenging landscape of private equity acquisitions, Jason shares crucial advice about assessing financial viability, defining long-term goals, and consulting trusted experts before making life-changing practice decisions. Whether you're a healthcare professional, administrator, or simply curious about the business of medicine, this episode offers valuable insights into leadership, technological innovation, and the enduring importance of the human touch in healthcare.
For more on Jason, visit the website: ophthalmology.uchicago.edu
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Welcome to the your Company Podcast. I'm your host, andrea Wright, founder and CEO of the Wright Consult Digital Marketing Agency, and also the creator of the Patient Buzz program. The goal of this podcast is to highlight healthcare professionals, their journey and how they're making the world a better place. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the your Company Health podcast. My name is Andre Wright and today we have Jason Reitbart, an executive administrator from UChicago. Hey, jason, good day and how are you? Good morning, how are you? I'm great. I'm great, I'm great To get things started. So tell us about your background and your journey in healthcare.
Speaker 3:Sure, I often when people ask me this question, I have to now remember, calculate the number of when I started versus today's date. Right, and I did this recently at a conference last week that I spoke at. But I've been in healthcare for 22 years, up until three years ago before I worked here at the University of Chicago. I work as the executive administrator in the Department of Ophthalmology. I was in healthcare operations pure operations for 19 years. So I was either a practice manager or operations director, and I was. Folks can go on my LinkedIn page if they're interested. I don't want to bore people with the details, but I worked for mainly in physician office spaces. Some of them were privately owned, some of them were public safety net hospital systems that owned ambulatory clinics. Some of it was a non-for-profit hospital, could be multi-hospital clinics. Some of it was a non-for-profit hospital, could be multi-hospital, could be one solo independent hospital owning medical groups. So that's where I was operations director or practice manager, and I did that for 19 years. So my roots come from operations, which, as you know, operations touches everything from HR to finance to strategy, to you name it. Sometimes you are the staff psychologist, if you will, as one of my staff members joked about with me many years ago. But the last three years in this role it's a bit more of an executive role where there's more decision making of the strategy X, y and Z. I'm one of the people with my chair, who's a wonderful individual and a great executive, to work for Dr Sino Harry Prasad. We work collaboratively to decide. Okay, you know we get input and data and other things, but we collaborate like okay, do we want to hire this number of subspecialists? Do we want to consider pitching opening a clinic in this neighborhood or this market? Right, it's more than that, but it can even be okay, what capital equipment do we want to purchase and focus on, because certain things are coming into life? Right? So it's more of a strategic conversation rather than prior roles where I might be completing a budget but I was focusing more on. You know I do budgets today, right, but in the past it was all right. I have staff schedules. I need to make sure I have coverage. Okay, we're registering patients in the clinic. Are we capturing all the necessary data? Are we capturing all the co-pays? Right? Whereas now I'm looking more at the reports and working with the management team to see, okay, do we see any trends.
Speaker 3:How can I consult and help so often my nurse manager I work with operations director we joked about this when we all first met each other a few years ago is that they look at me and I look at them. We work collaboratively. But my nurse manager often say you know, it's like having you, is like having an internal consultant with all your experience. But one thing that I make sure that I do in this role is I'm not out of touch. I visit the clinic, I talk to the physicians, make sure we take care of what they need. So that operator in me has never gone away. But I just don't get involved in the weeds. But I love it. I enjoy it. This is wonderful institutional work for it, no of course, of course.
Speaker 2:And Jason, where did this all start? So, you know, by talking to different healthcare. You know, managers, operators, there's always some passion there. You know there's always some aha moment when you get into a specific field. So talk to us about that moment.
Speaker 3:So for me I think it was a little unconventional. I think now folks generally they'll have their aha moment maybe in college or maybe they'll in grad school when they go for their master's program and then many of them go into a fellowship program following their master's and there's a lot of dual programs now an MBA, mha for those not sure you know master's of business administration and then a master's in healthcare administration. A lot of times people get both at the same time. Then they go for a fellowship. When I first started and we're talking the 2K era that existed, but it wasn't as seen as it is today. I think fellowships are very competitive today. I think there was probably less people pursuing than openings, even at one point, whether we're talking about the 90s or even the 2K era.
Speaker 3:I ended up when I was in college. I thought I wanted to be a city manager and I've always had a desire to help people. And I will tell you the first time I vividly remember wanting to help people and this is a personal story when I was born I was tongue-tied, meaning my tongue did not extend normally as it does and there was something that needed to be clipped for me to be able to do it. Well, the doctor at the time said he'll grow out of it. So my parents said, okay, it never happened. So when I was six or seven years old, I had to go through speech therapy because I had a lisp. I didn't really want to talk, I wasn't very engaging because I was embarrassed by it, and we had the surgery to fix it. When I was six or seven and I went through Mrs Swanson was her name I did two years of speech therapy with her and that was the time that I the first time I realized how vulnerable people could be Based on something that bothered them, and for me it was. I had a lisp. I had, you know, stuttering because I was just afraid to talk, because I couldn't talk the way everyone else did. And, being in that environment because we did group therapy, there was and this was a speech therapist at our school. It wasn't a special place, it wasn't a special center and lovely individual, and I think she was quite a bit older at that time. I'm sure she's since passed on, but I just remember I encouraged the kids as I got better and felt more confident, and I think it's just that desire to help people, desire to help people. Now I thought in college that desire was going to be being a city manager and making sure a city was, you know, economically thriving and that garbage was picked up and things were taken care of and every you know. Your talent would be nice.
Speaker 3:And even though I went through an internship and even a master's degree towards it, I never fell in love with it. I still loved working with people, but the technical pieces of it just didn't make my heart sing. So I met a doctor by chance on accident when I was in grad school and he offered me a position to run his clinic, which at first was really just me and him, and then eventually, within a few months, medical assistant because he had been retired. And then he came out of retirement. He's like I want, want to start over again. He was in his upper 60s at the time, so it was totally like okay, I'm kind of bored with this, so we're gonna put this off to the side, I'm gonna try this health care thing and I loved it.
Speaker 3:It was different every day, it was crazy sometimes, and just what I enjoyed the most about it was two things the building up of the business part, seeing it grow much like a plant, like I'm a gardener now Like the last 10 years I do home gardening, right. Seeing a plant or a flower go from a seed to a flowering plant of any kind or a tree, seeing that part and being a contributor, that was fun for me. That was like better than a video game, right. It was just like you were able to see something grow. You started from nothing and now you have something right, and that kind of spoke to my entrepreneurial spirit. But the other part of it is I would see people come in sick and leave healthy, and so the two of those kind of married together is what made me fall in love with healthcare. And if that answers your question, that's how it all kind of started.
Speaker 3:It wasn't like at seven, when I was going through the speech therapy, I knew it was going to be healthcare. I just knew I wanted to help people. It just translated into that years later. You know, life has a way of taking you. I had someone very much smarter than me tell me this it's much like water it's going to go wherever it's going to go, life's going to take you. You know, you can have an idea, but sometimes and I didn't know at 24, 25 years old. Life was going to take me there but it did, and I look back on it now, all the years that I've worked and and hopefully I've left things in better shape as I've worked a different way and worked with different people than the way I things in better shape as I've worked with different people than the way I encountered them from day one, and I think I have. But it has been a wonderful way to give back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's awesome A bit similar to my story because, you know, with digital marketing, I like to help doctors grow and I like to help people Also, people, you know I help doctors, help their patients, which is really a big thing for me. You know so great story and I can see why you're passionate about what you're doing. See why you're passionate about what you're doing. But, jason, in the interest of time, the buzzword nowadays is AI right?
Speaker 3:Artificial intelligence how do you see AI impacting your space? So we you know a lot of institutions use it, like clinically speaking, will use AI as a supplement. So I know there's a lot of folks that get scared of it because they're afraid that AI is going to be the doctor or nurse or the APP that's going to diagnose me. Right, where I've seen it and it's incredible. What it's done is that you can have a number of radiology studies and the AI system that a health system can subscribe to and have can review all those different studies and provide support to the radiologist reviewing the study as an example. Right, the radiologist will always review and come to their own conclusions, but to be able to get another set of eyes AI, if you will, no pun intended to be able to look at it and provide some feedback, I don't think there's many clinicians that would say this is bad. I wouldn't say that AI across the board. We've all used chat, gpt and other apps like that and sometimes you get varying degrees of success or fail. But the ones that are part of health systems they use it as part of their EMR and part of that usually are very robust. They're narrowly focused on certain conditions and I think, when you're talking about radiology or pathology and some of these things, I think you're going to see it over time, expand to provide more support, because I think you know, know, one of the things that helps is that right now we don't have enough in the united states, enough physicians, and while there has been a a opening up and an increase in the number of pas and nurse practitioners app's, they're still not enough. So when you have that to have a tool to be able to help you, it's not going to fix the issue at the root cause. I, personally speaking, I think the only way you're going to fix that is really by Congress deciding to add more resident slots, which haven't been updated in probably 30 or 40 years. So we have more residents coming through programs to be able to provide medical care, through programs to be able to provide medical care right, and probably increasing funding for those that want to be PAs and NPs, exposing that to kids at an early age that this is something that you would want to do and making it easier for them to access it, you know, so they're not drowning in debt and things like that. Like that's a whole conversation in and of itself, but for the here and the now. You have the technology. If it helps ease some of the response times, because sometimes people are critically ill and if you can get that response time down, that can literally be the difference between life and death If it helps, then it's a good tool. Right, I'm not a clinician by trade, but I've heard positive reviews anecdotally from clinicians. But I do know there's many health systems good health systems that use it in this capacity. But it's support.
Speaker 3:It's not necessarily people think that, okay, ai is being doctored now. No, that's not. To my knowledge, that is not occurring anywhere in the United States. Anywhere there's not a computer in an exam room while you're in there taking your blood pressure telling you what's wrong with you. Will that day ever come? I don't know. Yeah, I may be dead and gone by that point, but whether it comes or not today, no, that is not the case yeah, and I tell people all the time, ai is not here to replace people.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's just a supplement, just so what you're saying. It enhances processes, you know. So the people who will survive in the future are the people who know how to utilize AI. So if you know how to use this, then your organization is going to scale in the right way. So it's not a bad thing. Obviously, it's going to replace some errors like, maybe, designing and stuff of that nature. You know some errors that you know. This. Tools like chat, gpt can, can, you know, can be useful. But but overall I think it's it's, it's a help, it's a good thing.
Speaker 3:What? What I would tell you, kind of to close the loop on my thoughts on it, is that one thing that I often tell people is that most of the time, you hear what you hear about anything. Change is hard for humans in general. Right, it doesn't matter who you are, where you live, what you look like. Change is just, it's different.
Speaker 3:We're all used to routine and certain things and, yes, there's a select number of people that thrive on change. They like the right, but majority of people if we're just talking about the majority of the world they like to know that things are in a certain order, right. And when you disrupt that order, how many times do you go to the store and your favorite product is no longer there? Or they change the packaging and you can't find it. Or you go to a restaurant and they no longer have that item on the menu and you get oh, they can't leave well enough alone, and stuff like that, but ultimately it's because people don't like change. And a lot of times, honestly, that favorite meal was my favorite meal and I'm still upset that it's not there, right? So we have to acknowledge those are true feelings, right?
Speaker 3:But I think for AI in this context and conversation. It's important to understand that that, yes, it's new. New can be scary, new can be also good too. It's no different than when I was, you know, growing up as a kid, or even with my own child, getting them to try different foods from different parts of the world. Try it. Try it at least once or twice. If you don't like it, then okay, we can move on to something else, right? Right, you can't just eat pizza and chicken fingers forever, is kind of what I say.
Speaker 2:No, there you go. And a very important thing with AI, nothing can replace the human touch. Yes, correct, nothing can replace that, you know, and so we'll. You know we'll always be here to you know, to advance processes, to move, to get things going. Jason, look into, as we were talking about AI, the next 10 years, what are you seeing? Talk to us about some of the development in healthcare the next, say, the next five to 10 years. I know we spoke about AI, but what you could go any direction you want from a policy or from a, you know, just natural advancement. What are you seeing? So I think there'll be a natural, from a, you know, just natural advancement. What are you seeing? So?
Speaker 3:I think there'll be a natural hopefully a natural evolution in preventative care. I think you know I started in 2003. By 2008, 2010, 2012, most systems physician offices, health systems were moving from paper charts to electronic charts. Okay, and then we've seen an evolution of those electronic charts, which were very and they still. They're not perfect, but they were very cumbersome, right.
Speaker 3:So you went from a place of in 2005, my doctor scribbling on a sheet of paper their soap note to now you have systems that can listen, the AI system while the doctor and you are talking. Now the poor physician doesn't have to sit and type and stare away from you because the construction of the room and where the computer is located and you can have a more personal conversation than you did when emrs first started. Right, that's something I didn't think was going to happen this quickly. I went to a conference mgma, nashville in 22 or 23, I think, 23. And they were talking about it then and it's in use today, right? So part of it is almost unfair to ask me, like, what's going to happen in 10 years, because in two, three years time we went from like this testing phase of this type software to now it's in use and not in pilot, like it's full on. Microsoft and other companies are selling this.
Speaker 3:I think you're going to see, hopefully, more investment in seeing how genetics can impact, not just we think this person's going to have X, y or Z condition because of this, but even have something of how do we prevent it. And that might be a little longer than 10 years. But I'm hoping that preventative medicine and preventative care is more than just explaining to people what a well-balanced diet is and what you know vitamins you should have, and just not just checking your blood levels regularly. That it will be how early can we get to kids. Some of this is a little bit of pie in the sky. I'd love to see enough funding to support people having access to whole foods that they can't afford. As simple as that. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I would like to see some of those preventative programs. I think that would be for me, the next evolution if we're talking about preventative care, right, right right.
Speaker 3:Whether it gets public policy backing and funding is another. You know that's a whole other podcast, yes, yes, but I think that's one thing. I think you'll see AI used in a lot of other areas. I remember a couple of years ago I was at a Becker's revenue cycle three or four years ago and they were even talking about how they were going to use AI to more efficiently staff clinics and OR rooms with staff than a person like me could. Also for the purposes of scheduling appointments so that there's no human error and missing slots. And you know, I remember years ago and it still happens today you could have slots every 30 minutes or every 15 minutes and someone misbooks it and now all of a sudden there's 10 minute gaps. That's lost patient accessibility and revenue, right. So I think you're going to see that evolve and become more normal part of health care.
Speaker 3:Um, beyond that, I I do think that a lot of the emr systems I'm hoping they evolve to where they're more not just patient centric, but I hope they're more physician centric, because I think the biggest fault of EMRs when they first came it was going to be this great way to make physician's life and nurse practitioners and PA's life and staff life easier and I hope there's a concerted effort to continue to talk about wellness of our staff and frontline staff.
Speaker 3:We talked a lot about it during COVID but then, when COVID got better and everyone you know we got, we came, you know, out of that wave. You know 22 and 23,. We kind of stopped talking about it. But healthcare is still very, very difficult and not just laborious in nature, but it's stressful, you know. It's not like you're working at a hotel or a resort and everyone's on vacation and, generally speaking, most people are happy they're there, they're at a beach holiday or they're in a mountain resort or something like that. Most people come in health care they're miserable and unhappy because they're sick, and naturally so. And when you're taking that in, I hope there's still continued efforts that evolve over the next 10 years to make sure that we have enough mental health care accessibility, yeah, for everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 3:That would be great, and I hope so too, but again, these are more of you're asking me, like there's technical things, and then there's my pie-in-the-sky wish list.
Speaker 2:I know, I know it's a lot surrounding this and I know you've got to jump shortly, but talk to me about this, right? Let's talk about practice management. A doctor is listening. They have a private practice and they're looking some ways to grow. At this point, as we are seeing in the market, there are a lot of private equity firms. They're buying up all these local practices. If you could give some advice to a local doctor, what are some ways they can position themselves and survive in this environment?
Speaker 3:So I think the most important thing is they've got to look at their own internal processes and their own business and hopefully they either have someone on their team whether it's an external consultant or their practice manager or whatever the case may be or themselves, where they can assess the financial viability of that practice. So what is the health of that practice? Are you hemorrhaging patients? Are you hemorrhaging money? Are you able to keep up and recapitalize so you're able to put enough money away at the end of the year so that you can replace outdated equipment? Are you able to keep up with malpractice costs? That's usually the one major major concern of a lot of private physicians. Are you able to negotiate fair rates from the payers? Because there are some states in the United States where you have a whole host of physician clinics throughout private hospital owned, but then you also have a number of payers. Some states there's one dominant payer and it's like take it or leave it, right, so that that can change things too.
Speaker 3:As far as what you're going to get reimbursed, if they feel that they're viable, I think they just have to understand is and this is not something I can give them advice on what do they want to be when they grow up? What do you want it to be? Do you want to be a multidisciplinary practice? Do you want to make it a single specialty, big practice? Do you want to make it big to the point that you can sell it one day? Do you want to make it big because you believe in the private practice and the importance of it, which I think is? Even though I work for a health system, I still think it's very important to have private physicians, privately owned right, whatever it is, even if you're thinking about selling to private equity or health system.
Speaker 3:if you're at that stage, you have to understand what is the culture, beyond the finances, of what you're going to enter. Or you're nearing retirement, you're going to sunset your practice and then you're just going to be done with it, right? You have to answer those questions. There's a laundry list of questions. We could go on for quite a bit, but you have to ask yourself which direction do I want to go? And you have to ask yourself why am I going that direction?
Speaker 3:Some people may be like I just want to cash out, I'm done, I'm exhausted. I want to do something else with my life. Some people, just like I, want to build a business and see it grow, and these are the things that I want to do. You have to surround yourself with good experts, people you can trust, whether it's an attorney, a CPA, whether it's like I said. There's consultants around. They're not always from the big firms. There are small to medium consultants you can find on LinkedIn. You can find through their own physician networks. I'm sure there's similar physicians they work with. You can also ask fellow colleagues in your industry how did selling to set a health system or private equity. How did that work out for you? Are you happy? And don't just get one, get multiple, you've got to add that all together and then see is it the right fit for you? Which direction?
Speaker 2:Yep, all right. Well said, you know there's a lot of consideration around. You know growing a practice, and you lay that out excellently, I know you. You know we're up on the time. Jason, thank you so much for stopping by, appreciate your take, and we should definitely, you know, get together again.
Speaker 3:Happy to get together again. Good luck, andre. Thank you so much for your time. All right, thank you so much. Bye now.
Speaker 2:All right, bye. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you found this information useful. Please share this episode on social media and also visit our website at andreerightcom slash podcast for more, and also leave us a review on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, see you then.
