u
ENTREPRENEURS
SUMMER 2010 l 23
Q: “You need a little skill, a little guts, and a little luck. You shake it up and come out with a product.” a little luck. You shake it up and come out with a product. What I’ve learned through education at Medaille, and through the school of hard knocks has helped me to be a good leader.” Taking into account certain regulatory issues, the original Sleep Insights Medical Services, PLLC spun off a second company, Sleep Insights Management Services, LLC, to help with expansion. In tandem with that action, the team brought in a third business partner, Jeffrey Dann, a CPA and medical management executive with years of entrepreneurial healthcare experience. In the face of changes to the sleep medicine field, “About six to eight months ago, we had to throw out the playbook and rewrite it to include home sleep testing,” he says. “With a $300-400K investment in each of our sleep centers, the overhead is huge, and we decided as a company that instead of fighting it, we’d embrace “The field of sleep it.” With 38 full-time employees, medicine was including four physicians and two exploding at the time nurse-practitioners, the company weopened.Rochester now serves about 750 patients each month, with approximately wasunderserved,with $9 million in yearly sales. Having roughly half the beds expanded from that single that were needed.” location to four sleep centers in the Rochester area, Sleep Insights Management Services, LLC, and its related Sleep Therapy service, the company is now poised to reach a national market. “Sleep issues are linked to other medical problems; if we can treat patients with sleep apnea, we can lower blood pressure, and increase metabolism to promote weight loss,” he explains. “We only see a fraction of the patients who need it. We’ve launched a national campaign where we’re going from four fixed centers to a fifth in Oswego (NY), and coming up with many state and regional areas where we’re doing home studies and collaborating as care facilitators.” He continues, “We’ve taken hold of the business to collaborate with other partners; we’re their outsourced specialists.”
“
”
How can businesses act more like entrepreneurs?
A:
If you’re not first in the market, and if you’re not the change leader, someone else will be. There’s always someone out there with bright ideas. You have to live under the assumption that you’re not the brightest person in the room; be fast on your feet, and be proactive, not reactive.
Q:
What’s your advice for an aspiring entrepreneur?
A:
Stay in touch with what’s happening in your industry. I keep my fingers on the pulse of everything that’s happening. Many people get buried in the day-to-day of fighting fires, and they forget what’s happening around them.
Q:
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
A:
I’d like to see myself entering into a major administrative role in a hospital system, bringing some of the qualities in the private sector back to hospitals, where they get lost in the whole bureaucratic and institutional culture. I’d like to effect some real change that makes good business sense for the hospital and good sense for patients.