Augmenting Healthcare with Robotics with Derek Kissos, Chief Growth Officer and Chief of Staff at HHS

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket.

[00:00:06] Super thrilled that you joined us again.

[00:00:08] Today I've got the privilege of having Derek Kessos on the podcast.

[00:00:13] He is Chief Growth Officer at HHS.

[00:00:17] He is responsible for setting the organization's overall go-to-market strategy and building

[00:00:23] a foundation for long-term sustainable growth. even though I didn't have any experience, I got the proverbial tap on the shoulder, said go over to the UK, go to Australia, the Middle East, learn how we at the time, a different company, do healthcare around the world and let's bring that back to the US. And it was all around outsourcing kind of everything nonclinical and integrating those services for best outcomes. And then I did that for a while,

[00:01:40] got really interested into diving into technology

[00:01:43] and learning how technology

[00:01:44] can really make operations more efficient.

[00:01:46] And so from there I left At the end of the day, we're our large organization, over 20,000 employees now. But because we're privately held and family owned, our culture runs deep. Really spearheaded still by our founder, who's so active in the business and our chairman. We really take people serious and we look at ourselves as people company, not an outsourced company.

[00:03:00] I think that plus our ability to just be completely agile.

[00:03:03] I use a phrase here that is catching on, but augment it. And so it's technology and humans working hand in hand to drive outcomes. That's great, Derek. Thank you for sharing that. And so- Yeah, sorry for the long-winded answer. That was good. Yeah. No, I thought it was pretty spot on.

[00:04:20] And as we think about, and the listeners are. And so what we do is really leverage the consistency of our building blocks, what I believe is world class training. And then we basically build a solution hand in collaboration with our partners to really save long term. That's great. So is what you guys do then very much outsourced?

[00:05:40] So it's your people and the facilities doing the work and right.

[00:05:44] Okay, yes.

[00:05:45] Yeah, two, is how you win. And if it doesn't work out, they know you guys helped them and you got the business anyway, right? That's right. Yeah, that's right. I love it. I think it's smart, long-term thinking. And so if you think about biggest setbacks, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, innovators, learn most from their setbacks

[00:07:00] and they build bigger next time.

[00:07:02] So talk to us about a big setback you've experienced

[00:07:05] and a key learning that came from it

[00:07:07] that's made helped me with here at HHS is when we go to innovate, if we try to pilot new technologies, instead of getting someone to buy in and pay us for that, we're just investing. But if we're trying to be innovative, if we're trying to change the game, we've really realigned our mindset here at HHS to say, look, we want to do this. I'm not going to ask you to pay for it. I'm going to do it for you just so that you, we can prove it out, have the case study,

[00:08:24] you love it.

[00:08:25] Now we can sell it after that. and just realize it was, hey, that's not really what we're looking for. We're looking for paid media or that's not really what we're looking for. We're looking for PR. So we said, OK, the market's telling us they want something else in addition to or instead of. So we pivoted. And now we've been getting that response that you're talking about, right?

[00:09:40] Because we're offering what they want to buy.

[00:09:43] So it's a it's a great lesson.

[00:09:45] And folks, take this from Derek. employees. Hospitals don't shut down, right? And one of the things that I think we're going to see more and more are A, robotics companies stop the bifurcation of software and hardware and do it together so they can really drive the outcomes and tweak it for the healthcare, depending on the size of the halls, those things. But we're also seeing it a lot now in the kitchen side, whether

[00:11:00] that's food production, whether that's plate building, tray building, or the restaurant in

[00:11:04] the box concepts. The biggest thing still out there, and it's. That's great, Derek. Yeah, just finding the right applications for technologies that exist and being thoughtful about the value it's delivering. Love that so much. And yes, and I just think about, like, you walk into some airports. Like, I'll tell you, I don't know. I think Houston, for example. Like, I love that airport.

[00:12:20] And you walk through there, and you're just like, damn, this

[00:12:22] is awesome.

[00:12:23] And how cool would it be to feel?

[00:12:24] Obviously, your reasons for being there

[00:12:26] are different than being in a hospital. the folks listening that may want to interact with you or engage, leave us a closing thought and the best place they could reach out to you. Yeah, absolutely. Look, at the end of the day, I think in outsourcing hospitality services, nonclinical support services, whatever you want to call it, to me comes down to choosing the right partner and choosing the right people

[00:13:41] that you can build trust and confidence on

[00:13:42] and not just what is on up,

[00:13:44] an RFP response or a presentation, right?