Building Bridges Across the Healthcare Ecosystem with Adam McMullin, CEO of AvaSure

[00:00:03] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket podcast. I'm excited to be with an outstanding leader today that's changing the game in healthcare. His name is Adam McMullin. He is the CEO at AvaSure. So excited to have you here on the podcast today. Adam, thanks for joining me. Saul, looking forward to it. It's Friday. It's a nice way to wrap the week up.

[00:00:30] It definitely is. It definitely is. You got in at 1 a.m. Been a full week, a little customer time, team times, but this is it. We like bring it home with a chat. I love it. Did you go anywhere fun? I was in Michigan and for the first time in my life, there were tornadoes with tornado sirens in the middle of the night. So that was exciting. Are you serious?

[00:00:50] A bunch of my team were down in the basement of the hotel for that. I realized it was only about 15 minutes long, so I jumped into the bathroom and we got through it, but had never heard sirens before. That was a something. Wow. You wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, what's going on? But everything turned out okay. All okay. All okay. Okay, good. Glad you made it. Good to be with you. Tell us a little bit about what inspires your work in healthcare and give us a little insight on AvaSure, what you guys think.

[00:01:17] Yeah, I wasn't fortunate enough to start my career in healthcare. I got to work actually around the globe for large customers like Sony and Lenovo and Siemens. And I loved it because it was intellectually interesting. And I got recruited into healthcare about two decades ago, which I guess dates me, but I found a sixth gear and it really changed the game.

[00:01:39] And getting into healthcare and going from working on things or intellectually interesting, but adding that dimension of what it means for patients and care teams was phenomenal. And in AvaSure today, one of the things we do is provide a cocoon of safety around patients and care teams when they're in clinical environments.

[00:01:58] And there's these incredible stories that come out of that. Stories such as reducing violence where someone had smuggled a weapon into a care environment. Stories such as preventing a fall of a loved one or abuse of a minor.

[00:02:14] And those are awful, but we bring those back to our town halls and it really fuels you. I was asking a well-known CIO to be an advisor. And during that discussion, he held his phone up of one of our devices. And he said, Hey, in my father's last few weeks, knowing that you were providing safety to him and helping to enable that really gave us peace of mind and I'll do anything you want for the company.

[00:02:40] So just having those moments of helping people access care, safe, providing a safe environment, it just, it gives you passion bumps and it makes a difference in your culture and the types of people you can recruit. So that's how, for me personally, I think I'm going to stay in healthcare for the rest of my career in some way, shape or form. Adam, I think that's so great, man. And you feel the same way too. That element of like you're impacting lives and you're making a difference. And I think I saw you guys at AONL this year.

[00:03:10] Yeah, we had our pretty significant contingent out there. And that's always a great show for us because at our core, we're a technology company and we work to do a couple of things, right? I mentioned providing that sort of cocoon of safety around patients and care teams. We also work to ensure patients can access care when they need it, bringing things like cardiology and nephrology and neurology, specialty consults with point of care or wound care.

[00:03:38] And then we work to ensure healthcare is delivered efficiently. And all of that shows up on your P&L so you can actually pay for it and there's a real ROI. However, while that's all technology, we really wrap our technology in data, but most importantly, a clinical element. So you mentioned AONL, we're over 10% nurses and we have nurses that work with our customers in the sales process to make sure we're designing solutions that get adopted, that stay vibrant, that continue to expand and scale.

[00:04:07] We have them involved in our customer success. We have them involved in product management, designing technology. So it's really special when we go to AONL. We had an amazing sunrise session with a couple of our customers highlighting some really new and novel perspective around the value of virtual nursing for health systems. And it's great to see those customers share their stories. And what was phenomenal about this one is it had some great hard hitting data, which is where we like to live, right?

[00:04:36] There's a lot of shiny objects out there in technology development, but really making it work and scaling it. That's where you want to be. That's fantastic. Congrats on that. And certainly walking the walk, not just talking. It makes a difference. The involvement of nurses and the entire kind of innovation cycle that you guys have there is inspiring. Would you say what you guys do is different than some of the solutions that are already out there?

[00:05:02] Yeah, a few things. So just the heart of what we do is we provide the most widely adopted across the largest number of health systems, sort of AI enabled virtual care and smart room technology platform. That's a lot of words. But in essence, it does those things I talked about, the safety, the access to care, the improvement in efficiency and making sure it delivers both the clinical and financial results.

[00:05:26] But what's different is that large base matters, right? That large base shows vitality and durability in our company. It shows trust in our company, but it also enables something that's core to what we do. There's a lot of technologies in and around the space we play in, and we really need to bring that together. And I still think this is an area where sometimes healthcare struggles and how you get all of that integrated well so it works seamlessly for the users and for the patients.

[00:05:54] So we have an open architecture and generally folks in the ecosystem want to work with us. Larger companies, smaller companies because of that base that we bring. And it's hard to help sell the health systems. So the fact that we're in over 225 health systems, over 1,200 rooftops allows us to really create an ecosystem that's very differentiated in our market.

[00:06:17] And then we try to do a lot of that up between Avasure and our partners, like bringing ambient nursing documentation to market with Suki, or we're working with a company that is helping us do computer vision vitals to provide yet another level of safety. I've worked with companies to provide virtual nursing physicians, like we give them access and that works really well. But the other things I would focus on, as I mentioned earlier, is that clinical dimension, right?

[00:06:42] At the end of the day, we've all seen technology that goes into healthcare and it's not built into the way of working. And we are really good at the process design, the change management, and then staying with our customers over that journey. So that as people change or needs change, the technology evolves, it doesn't go stale. And I think that's critically important. And that's how we can do what we do at real scale. And it's kept our company healthy.

[00:07:11] We're a growing company with a healthy balance sheet. And we've been here for a decade and expect we're going to be here much longer. That's fantastic, Adam. Thanks for sharing that. Building companies is not easy. Tell us about a setback and a key learning that's come out of that has changed the way you operate or go to market. It's the people I have the opportunity to work with and serve have always been important to me. And something that really brought this home is when I missed on a people dimension.

[00:07:39] Earlier on in my career, in a leadership role, I ended up taking a role in an organization. It was a great organization, phenomenal mission, great culture. Everything about the team was phenomenal. What I missed the opportunity, sort of diligence, the board. And there was a lack of alignment between the business and the board. And that was a lack of alignment around customer focus, around the importance of really long-term, durable relationships, and the reputation and trust and integrity that's embodied in that.

[00:08:09] And it caused for tremendous stress and strain and sub-optimization of the business. And I wasn't the person I wanted to be for my team and for customers. You know, you kind of had your hands tied behind your back in a way. And from that day forward, I'm much more careful around really diligencing everyone in an opportunity in my career to say, are we aligned, right?

[00:08:34] Are we aligned on our desire for outcomes and making an impact and growth? And are we all on the same team, right? I'm not a big hierarchy person. Even in the Avasure company, you have to have a reporting structure. But I don't really care where you report. It's people on teams doing great things. And if people aren't aligned with that culture, it's just not a good fit. And that time and that experience I shared, just it did not work. And it was super stressful. Life's too short. It absolutely is.

[00:09:04] Sort of headed a different direction. But I would just encourage everyone to make sure you've got the right people. And sometimes you can have great people, but they're not the right people for that situation. Making sure you're aligned on those core values-based tenants. It makes everything go a lot faster. Everyone has a lot more fun. And you just get better outcomes. Adam, I love that. And those moments are the ones you learn most from. Oh, man.

[00:09:28] Nothing like getting kicked in the face to evaluate and learn and reflect and reflect and reflect and change your operating DNA. So they're gifts. And so from that, and just kind of like for me to be able to cement it and for us to share with our listeners, it's about aligning on values, but then communicating early and often to make sure that there's alignment. Right? Because that's the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you've got to embody those values. You've got to hold people to those values.

[00:09:55] And to your point, communicating everyone in the AvaSure company, we've got great clarity around behaviors that we expect. Some of them, we really want to, like many organizations, enable accountability. And we've written words below the values that, like, hey, speed matters. And we want you to be, to make decisions. And we're not going to fire if you make an honest mistake. Right? Yeah. And sort of being permissive and then really bringing that to life around the team. So that's great, Adam.

[00:10:23] Thanks for doubling down on that leadership lesson. I think there's a lot of people leading organizations out there and even part of organizations where this message is important. Are you communicating? Are you aligned? Are you willing to hire and fire based off those values? And I think the message Adam's leaving us with is a really strong one. Adam, there's a lot of tech out there and healthcare is moving fast. What's one trend or tech that you feel is going to change healthcare as we know it today? I'm in this space, so I got to talk about it.

[00:10:52] But as you, I think something that's happening right now is the pressure on health systems financially is probably as great as I've ever seen it. Right? As you look at the funding challenges and the already very slim single digit to sometimes negative margins and what's happening with reimbursement. But that is causing a thinking of saying, hey, how can we get better leverage off of being a system? Where can we find efficiency?

[00:11:18] How do we work better together rather than more siloed or independently? And that combined with proven advances in technology is enabling things like the space we work in. Two years, three years ago, there was a lot of piloting around smart rooms and now it is going to scale. And we have really worked with a lot of health systems around strong ROI.

[00:11:40] And the reason this is important is as you move to smart rooms, you enable so many other things in health systems that whether it's always on safety from violence for care teams, safety for patients, access to care when you need it. And this has financial benefits. It's got real care benefits.

[00:11:59] We hear all the time when people are interacting with extended care teams that are outside the room, hey, I'd love to share this information with, for example, my caregiver or nurse on the floor, but they're so busy and I don't want to take them away from these other important things. But the technology is there and it's driving improved throughput monitoring that will allow us to deliver care in ways that's more financially efficient, serve more patients. And it's really happening.

[00:12:26] It's been talked about for a long time, but we're seeing a lot of that scaling of these types of technologies. We're working closely with some of the EMR companies to do it. And I think that's actually pretty exciting because there's people have been talking about things like smart rooms and automating clinical environments since I've been in health care and we're seeing it for real now. It's finally happened. Yes, finally starting to scale. So that, yeah, that's great.

[00:12:50] And you love your point around the partnerships that you've done because point solutions, health systems are tired of them. And now offering a platform where people can do more than just one thing and the work that you guys are doing seems to be making a big impact there. Well, look, Adam, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've really enjoyed learning more about you and Abishore.

[00:13:14] What closing thought would you leave our listeners with and what's the best place they could get in touch with you and the organization if they want to learn? Saul, I've enjoyed it as well. Tracking me down is fairly easy. It's AvaSure.com, A-V-A-S-U-R-E.com. This is where you can find the company. And I'm pretty, try to be pretty responsive when people reach out. I'd say as a closing thought is that ecosystem to get things done with really proven partners that can deliver results.

[00:13:44] We've seen when we put together, when we look at our sort of our close partners, these are folks where we've, we always trust them to do the right things. And occasionally I have to get on the phone with the other CEOs. We're dealing with a sticky situation. Those aren't stressful discussions because I think they would recognize I'm going to work to do the right things for customers. And I recognize the same thing. So finding partners that are proven, that have a track record, that are going to be with you thick or thin and work within the knowledge of this.

[00:14:14] We're all part of an ecosystem. Right? So we can't put up walls. We got to put bridges out. And I want to bring things together so that they really deliver for care teams in the place they need to do their really tough job. Right? Real time in front of patients, in front of their families for really important stakes. And we owe that to them. Yeah. That's a, that's huge, Adam. And so love the work and dedication your team's doing to deliver that. If people want to reach out, where can they do that? AvaSure.com.

[00:14:43] And you can find me on LinkedIn. Brilliant. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Outcomes Rocket today with the amazing Adam McMullen, CEO of AvaSure. In the show notes, you'll find all the ways to get in touch with him and his team. So make sure you do that. And if something in today's episode resonated with you, make sure you share it with a friend. That's how innovation happens. Thank you all for tuning in. And Adam, thanks for being with us. Thanks, Saul.

[00:15:13] Appreciate it.