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β π I'm Sarah Richardson, a principal here at this week Health where our mission is healthcare transformation powered by community. Welcome to this executive interview, candid conversations about leading with purpose.
Let's connect.
βRob, we are live at Hys. It is so much fun to be here with you.
Thank you for making this possible.
Absolutely.
This is such a testament to our partnership this week. Health 2, 2, 9 project. And Carahsoft do amazing things together. I mean, look at the number we raised on Sunday at the golf tournament. Amazing.
Amazing. That's two years in a row. It's now over $85,000.
Yes.
And the partnership that we formed about two years ago has just grown and grown. And so not only from the golf tournament and hys having you guys in our pavilion, and it really is a pavilion 80 by 60 with over 30 partners be attending in this thing at at year. But we also. Sponsor about a dozen of the 2, 2, 9 events, and I've personally have been to three of those and I haven't had the luxury of you, you being the moderator.
It's been Bill or Drex who do an amazing job. But there's one coming up that I might be able to go to where you're gonna be there because I'd love to see you in action. But we have a great partnership and it's gonna get better and better as time goes by.
What I love about our partnership is truly how impactful and big it is, and people ask me all the time.
I need to know more about Caresoft and to level set the audience just in appreciating the presence and the impact that you have. Share more about Caresoft.
Sure. So I'd be happy to. So what's interesting about Caresoft is we're a 23-year-old company, still privately owned. We're now almost $24 billion.
And what we are is a master aggregator. So we're kind of a, a channel for a couple of thousand vendors. We sell to several thousand resellers. And so why did. Why would you do that? First of all, the vendors don't wanna negotiate with 2000 resellers for a contract to distribute and get paid, and the partners don't wanna negotiate with the vendors either.
So we basically are the middleman. But the thing that differentiates us from the other people that do distribution or aggregation, is we really help our partners on what I call the top of the funnel, getting leads in the door, into the funnel and the bottom of the funnel. Now, I'll just quickly talk about that.
So you won't see any of our partners with a big massive pavilion that hymns or vibe or chime. We've invested in lots of events. We do 20 healthcare events a year. Mm-hmm. We do over 80 government events a year. We also have 400 people in marketing that can help them do email campaigns, webinars.
As a matter of fact, we hosted a webinar for one of our partners Lab Point, and we engaged this week Health Drex to do a pre. A 15 minute interview without a point to help promote the webinar. Mm-hmm. And then Drx was on the panel, I was the panel moderator and we executed that one hour webinar. We had a hundred registrations to put people attend.
So they got 50 leads at that webinar for less than $10,000. It was amazing.
Mm-hmm.
So we can do all kinds of things to help 'em the top of the funnel. But the other thing that people know us for really, really well is the bottom of the funnel. What do I mean by that? You get to the end of a cycle of a sales cycle and what do you need a purchase order, right?
And so we have over 400 contracts between government and healthcare that. Basically allow a procurement organization to execute a PO to the reseller of choice without having to go out to RFP. And so we simplified the procurement process. And in hospitals, for example, half of them are public sector, university hospitals, county hospitals, federal government on the other half are commercial.
We've made the move. And so the commercial got the Publix. Other guys buy off of the government contracts, state contracts, nbo, cloud nbo. We own all those contracts. On the commercial side, which is the other half, they use the GPO contracts, like well Link or Vizient or mm-hmm. Premier. And so those GPOs have finally figured out that they really need care.
So for this contract, so we're in the process, we've been down selected, we'll have one of them probably done next month and the other one's this summer, and that'll open up for our partners, the rest of the market, for the bottom of the funnel. And so we provide unique value. None of our competitors do that in contract.
None of them home contracts. It's how we started in the business. So that's the value we bring to these partners. And I will say this, I've been doing this for two years with Caresoft as healthcare. CTO was in the vendor side for a long time. Awesome. They asked me to come in to help build their bringing in healthcare, and when I went to the first hims with them two years ago in Orlando, not many people would come to the Caresoft booth and know what Caresoft does.
Last year was better. This year is amazing. Everyone's looking for the Caresoft booth because they know who we are now. I have a big LinkedIn presence and so I probably get 10 requests a month or 12 requests a month to connect with me, and they're a vendor looking to get into the Caresoft ecosystem. We have 15 vendors over there with eight by 10 booths within our pavilion.
Mm-hmm.
That we get them at a very affordable price. Way cheaper than they'd get if they got a boot at HIMMS and in premier location, not in the basement. And I talked to every single one of 'em yesterday to say, thank you for being here. Try to learn a little about what their solution is if I didn't know.
And they all said. This is a great value and the traffic's been awesome. They're all generating leads and you know, we do things in advance to try and drive boot traffic but the big karasov van and most people that walk over here are looking for karasov. So it's working. We're getting a big more presence.
And quite honestly, you guys are helping with that brand too, because of the 2, 2, 9. Every time I go to one, I meet 15 new people. Mostly new people. Sometimes I know the people that are there.
Well, and the power in that relationship from what you've shared, because everyone's talking about AI and cyber, rightfully so.
And then you can dig into some of those layers and realize you've gotta have your data and your engineering and all these different components. Come together for your cyber posture to be strong for your AI governance, to work, to deploy these new tools for all the amazing aspects that are out here.
When A-C-I-O-A ciso, others are looking for those unique solutions, they can come to you, they can come to us, and now that web is. So much bigger. Yep. When you think about the criteria that it takes to become part of Caresoft or how a CIO is finding new solutions through their relationship with you, what is the best way for them to get access to all of those relationships?
So coming to these events is in the booth is the number one thing but a couple things. When I. Have a request for a partner to come into the Cares Shop ecosystem. I ask them two questions and you'd think I was Bill Russell. I ask them, what problem do you solve? Yes. And what's the value provided to the provider?
And if they can't successfully answer you those two questions in less than 30 seconds or a minute. Then the likelihood of getting in is not 'cause if they don't have that value, that's what CISOs and CTOs and cos are looking for.
Yes.
Unique solutions, emerging technology. And what the vendors do is they come to us to get access to the healthcare marketplace, right as CTO.
What I do in these events. Is I get up on stage and so I had two stage presidents this week. I've already done both of them. One was on Monday in the AI forum. I'll talk about that in a second. The second one was today which was a cybersecurity play. And I did that in co-sponsorship with Ity, who has this amazing microsegmentation solution I do, which we basically got him to do a study.
A blind study. They didn't know Elise or Caresoft about microsegmentation issues, whether the challenges, whatever. And in that session, we found out that there's real, this is a real solution that's got a real need that solves a real problem for a scary situation. So in the meaning today, several of the C level people that were there talked about.
All these medical devices, many of which they don't even know where they are, they don't have access to 'em in terms of being able to discover them on the network. And many of the vendors come and say, don't worry, just we'll put it in. We'll update and you don't have to worry about it. And that's scary.
So they don't see it, they don't update it, and so they don't know what the risk is. And that's their solution helps with that. And it can deploy fast and not disrupt operations. We have other cyber people in our booth. Today, and we allowed one of our partners TRX to take the cyber session in the AI forum.
They wanted to present on their own, which was fine, but in the AI forum on Monday we bought into a 30 minute presentation and we offered it to a brand new partner that I only met my two weeks ago. And the name of that partner is Jorie, J-O-R-I-E, Jory ai. And they have an amazing solution. I wanna introduce you to them because they basically can use AI to automate the revenue cycle.
And when I saw their demo and when I saw the CEO or small hospital, probably a $200 million hospital on stage with them, it by saying this solution first year implementation was only took weeks to get started. 34.5 million in incremental revenue to them using this automation tool. They basically get the denials, claim denials down from six point a half percent to a half a percent.
We all know that when you have six point a half percent denials between rework and river, you end up losing 20 or 25% of that. We never get the revenue. Yeah. So by going from. In six and a half to a half, you've already picked up 2% revenue. And honestly, the CEO said this kept our hospital in business.
So that's an example of the kind of partners that we bring into the network who've got, who are solving a real problem and have real ah, I and I love that part of my job and people come after me all the time and talk about it. I have dozens of ad hoc requests to meet me at hymns. Why I have this big LinkedIn presence.
I talk about, you know, about HIMSS and where I'm gonna be there and. I say to them, just come to the booth. If I'm in the booth, then I'm free. If I'm not in the booth, I'm in a meeting or a presentation. So that's the way we're building the brand. But the best part of my job is to seeing all these emerging technology solutions and actually that part of my job.
I've talked to Jerry and build actually when I was in Fort Lauderdale. We're, we've agreed, not on paper, but we've agreed one of the things we can do for your network is to have caresoft bring in one or two of those emerging technology vendors on a webcast that we host or you guys host, to get them access to all the connections we have.
Yeah.
Because. They don't know getting the elicit the word out or the jewelry word out, or some of the other guys over here like island, it's a tough challenge. And you guys provide a platform for that. Now we can invite people. You can invite people, but we're gonna do that. And that's a value to help your brand and it's a value to help our brand.
Well, and the outcome from all of that is that. The CIOs know us and trust the CISOs. Know us and trust C Mio, c Iios, analytics, RevCycle. On and on. You think about RevCycle forum, we're gonna, we're gonna have one. We'll have a summit in the summer and it's in
Chicago.
It's in Chicago.
Guess where jewelry is headquartered?
Chicago,
Oakbrook, Illinois.
How did that even happen?
I talked to them about it Monday and they said we.
We're in, and here's what CISOs and CIOs, one of the challenges is the CIO will be like, oh my gosh, this will automate this much of rev cycle. Well, guess what? It has to be rev cycle's idea. And now if you've got your CFO or the rev cycle coming to them and saying, here's a vetted partner.
So now you're not having to worry about someone finding something online or someone recommending something that they didn't have vetted. It's vetted, it's proven. And now. The convergence inside the health system because too often CIOs will say to me, how do I get CFOs to want to automate RevCycle so I don't have to lay off people on my team?
Or how we get these different aspects, like now the convergence is now coming together. They trust us at our event. They trust you because they know you've done your homework. Now you literally, you're going to the marketplace picking these things off the shelves and you already know it's going to work.
Right.
And
We take so much of the guesswork.
Yeah.
Now, if we can reduce that contracting cycle, which is another one of your superpowers, because AI's actually increased it for a little bit with the complexities, if you can get that sales cycle back to a space that's, maybe it's 12 months still too long in my book, but the average is about one 12 to 18 in healthcare, if we can get that sales cycle down to under a year.
Everybody's winning at a pace that's going to keep up with the technologies that are making that possible.
What's interesting about your rev cycle, and they can't go have a commercial, but they'll meet the people that they sell to, so they sell to CFOs and CEOs.
Yeah.
What I have told them is, you can't avoid the CIO or the cto.
No, because it'll never get in. If they're not involved in the decision process, they have to bless it because it comes outta their budget. But can you imagine? Even just the operational savings of people who do websites, like being able to automate that. In the session on Monday, they showed a demo, which was like a fast forward demo of their bot going into Epic.
Then moving to this, then moving to that, going into this, they connect with all the EMRs and they connect with 3,600 insurance providers and they can automate the whole process. And eliminate rework. That's huge. And the fact that they can bring additional incremental revenues immediately. All these hospitals are struggling with bottom line, if you think about it, that $34 million that, that small hospital, so that goes right to the bottom line, right?
So now they're, they've gone from a 1% opex to a 5%. I'm sorry. Bottom line, that's huge. And now they might have some money to invest in things that they know they need to do, but they haven't had the money to do. So. The beauty of this is that's what HS is all about. We've got now have 15 partners that have unique solutions that solve very specific problems for healthcare.
And they're with us as a partner in Caron.
Imagine if next year we're talking about. Truly how much more efficient processes inside of healthcare have become so that we have better outcomes, better quality, better overall care. We've gotta be able to continue to lean into the clinical aspects of our industry.
We need more nurses, we need more doctors. The ability to have. Funds available to do some of that. There was an article last night I was reading, I love to read BB, C 'cause it gives me like the global view of the universe and I always read the news before I go to sleep and AI is now solving what was once UN or incurable diseases because of the way it just keeps refactoring the ability to go after certain things.
And I'm like, wow, you think about healthier people in some aspects, like being able to actually go after. The chronic disease states and the wellness aspect of healthcare.
Right.
That to me is such a win across the continuum. It happens with technology footprints that allow our caregivers, our executives to have options.
Yeah. That Caresoft gives hospitals options.
Yeah. You know, I'll give you one more short example of a incredible technology company that is launching in the us Atkins in the Karasov booth. They picked us to help launch the us. They've been in international for 10 to 15 years, but they had to go through FDA approval and HIPAA compliance and all that kind of stuff.
But what they do in a nutshell is they will use their AI tools to bring. CT scan for a stroke victim into their tool, diagnose it, present it to the neurologist and the radiologist, and half the time that the normal process does with a diagnosis on any device, anywhere, any time. And they have proven results in international with two things.
They reduce the time to care and for a stroke victim, every minute counts. Mm-hmm. And they have reduced hospital stays by two and a half days. So they're not only saving lives. They're bringing money to the bottom line. 'cause you and I both know, getting an extra two and a half days of a hospital bed is huge.
Well, yeah, the daily cost of average length of stay cost is tremendous.
And they're one of those new vendors that I brought on six months ago, and they decided to launch at HIMSS because they've got everything they need to launch, but they need our resources on the top of the funnel and on the bottom of the funnel.
And so they have a booth over there too.
How often are I get? People are pinging you all the time to be a part of caresoft. How often do you get to find something or do you find something where you're like, I might want you in my universe.
So I actually found elicit. I don't go scout people because I am.
Full bore responding to people who want to connect with me.
Yeah.
And I'm a part-time consultant. I tell people my full-time job is golf.
Golf,
and my part-time job is a consultant for, and I'll remind everybody that I kicked Bill Russell and JIRA's Butts in golf down in Fort Lauderdale, and they're not happy about it.
They're not. They're like, when did Rob get so good at golf? I'm like, when he partially retired and plays four days a week, but you're the great ace in the hole on the course. For sure.
Yeah, so we love our partnership and you know, we connected last year at Vibe in a very unique way, and it's been nothing but uphill from there.
It's
awesome. It has been so fun. And that was an elicit event, right? And it was 20 degrees outside,
right.
And we're in this. A private dining room at a great restaurant downtown Nashville. And what was supposed to maybe been an hour and a half dinner. We just had so much fun. Three plus hours, right?
We stayed there having fun, solving problems, talking about ideas, right? And that moment I was forever stuck with, I love Elicia. I could talk about them to everybody, right? From that dinner and the relationship with Carahsoft keeps blossoming everywhere we go.
And so for those of us in the audience, you and Dare open by live entertainment for three hours, it was hilarious.
And both of us had said, we haven't lasted that much in 30 years.
It was the best dinner. And I host a lot of them that I have ever been to, and I got to go because Drex had another commitment like, you have to go to this dinner. It's a new potential partner, et cetera. I'm so grateful because I do consider you a friend.
Yeah. Caresoft. I mean, I look at the $45,000 and every year it goes up a little bit and I know it's gonna keep going up and we're, I mean, we're solving problems. People need problem, need help solving. We're also helping fight childhood pediatric cancer.
Absolutely. Like
all the goodness that has come from our relationship and.
Partners we're bringing up through the mix. I hope everyone is paying attention to the barometer every year. And HIMS will be our barometer, Rob. I mean, that's our thing is every year, how much more are we doing? How much good are we delivering?
Right?
And we get to do that together and
it's a huge side benefit of our partnership for sure.
It's
just so much fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we had a great time on Sunday. People bought some lemonade from you guys and it was just a really great weather. It was, the course was full. We had probably overbooked, we had to rush to get everybody to participate, but in the end we had over 80 people participate in that golf outing.
Yeah. And it was a combination of. You guys, us guys, our vendor partners and end user partners who can have a little fun before they go to work at himss.
What I'm hearing rumblings, this is not com as, as Rob would say, it's not papered yet. We're going to do something really unique in Chicago, 'cause it might be cold in April and we're gonna bring the golf tournament to another big event in coming up in the summer.
So the, it's gonna be off the charts.
Yeah.
Bringing people together, having fun, raising money, and finding solutions for our biggest problems in healthcare today. Right. We appreciate you so much. Thank you.
Absolutely.
Great to see you. Awesome.
Take for good chance to talk to you
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