Client Spotlight: Empire Diagnostic Solutions
Edward Kantor is president of Empire Diagnostic Solutions, a mobile diagnostics company that early-on identified information technology’s potential for smarter, faster medical diagnostics. Closing the time-lag between medical test and patient report can, when you’re dealing with a serious illness, sometimes mean the difference between recovery and exacerbation: “In diagnostics,” Kantor says, “it’s all about how fast you process your work that affects the final outcome.”
What does Empire Diagnostic Solutions do? How does your approach differ from other diagnostic equipment companies?
We are an IDTF organization. That stands for “independent diagnostic testing facility.” We are licensed by Medicare. That already puts us apart from other diagnostic companies in the same field.
We do medical diagnostic tests of patients. We have over 200 doctors in the [New York] metro area who we work with. When patients see a doctor for a procedure, we come into the doctors office and perform those tests on the premises. By definition, we’re a health care provider, because we’re registered with Medicare. We deal with various diseases, abnormalities and pathologies of the vascular structure and abdominal organs, and cardiovascular diseases. In general, we do ultrasound diagnostic testing, which covers the entire body from head to toe.
To set ourselves aside from other companies, we have obtained all the possible accreditations that a diagnostics company can have in this nation. There is ACR, there is an ICAVL—the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Vascular Laboratories—then there’s also AUIM. All these four accreditations are very tough. ACR is the gold standard of imaging centers. Mobile diagnostics never really went for it, because it’s tough and nowhere is it required. But we decided to have it to show that our quality is the same as that of a hospital imaging center. It’s the same thing for the other two. The IAC-accredited vascular surgeons have to go through [obtaining ICAVL accreditation], so we went though it as well, to demonstrate that our quality is the same as a vascular surgeons’.
First, we stand apart by being IDTF, and second, by having all the accreditations. Some companies have one but not the other. On the East Coast, we’re the only ones who’ve achieved all four accreditations. IAC posted us as their number-one company on their website to show that this mobile company has achieved accreditation.
Third is our technological advancement. The goal is to provide better care, faster, more accurate results and be the dominant company on the East Coast.
How has the personalization of digital technology affected EDS?
It has changed the way we approach business dramatically. Information technology is the biggest part of our company, a branch—actually a separate company—called Universal Software.
Based on our experience in health care, we’ve developed our proprietary workflow application. This was built to simplify your daily workflow of office routines. So many things go into processing patient data: from data entry, document management—scanning—to sorting it to various physicians, to billing—insurance companies—and receiving payments, scheduling, logistics, equipment tracking. On any given day, we have about 27 mobile units on the road, with 30 techs carrying those units. So we have very solid business logistics built into that application.
Two years ago, we were using various applications—just regular folders for scanning patients, on hard drives. Our scheduling was done on paper. It took so long. We were only working with 80 doctors, doing 1,500 tests a month. Now we do 4,300 tests per month and we work with 200 doctors. And our staff hasn’t increased, because of the implementation of that workflow application that we designed.
It’s accessible from the iPad. Referring physicians have access to it, because it’s a cloud-based. They can pull up patient reports in seconds.
How will EDS operate differently in the next five years?
When we started our business six years ago, we jumped a couple years ahead of ourselves. Everybody else was still using thermal printers to print ultrasound images. We invested in the PACS system. PACS [picture archiving and communication system] is a radiology-based digital system that allows you to, once you acquire an ultrasound image, keep it digitally, and the physician can receive these images. We invested in this system; we spent thousands of dollars; we decided early-on that we wanted to be digital.
Then we saw an opportunity to build our own application, because we had the knowledge and the capability. We hired a very intelligent programmer. And it turns out, after two years, that we’ve built a product that’s now universal, for any mobile radiology group—not knowing back then that we were going to have a separate product to deliver, and now it’s selling already on the market. We’re going to continue to innovate our workflow application. We have a very extensive backlog of all the features we want to add. A sales and marketing module, analytics for profitability, all of this will be entered into workflow application.
When I say “it saves time in processing,” I mean that it saves time in getting the final result. In diagnostics, it’s all about how fast you process your work that affects the final outcome. If we take a day or two days to process a file, that patient result will come back in 3-4 days to the physician. To be able to process this data within a day and generate a result by the next day, that beats the national standard and it gives better patient care. Some abnormalities are severe, and they require immediate results. We can often provide 3-4 hours turnaround time.
Given the evolving field of health care in the United States, how might EDS adapt?
Originally, when Obama proposed Obamacare, two things came to my mind. First, it’s going to create competition for private insurance. Right now, private insurance is not regulated. They all follow the same criteria, but they all have high fees. If Obamacare is released, they’re going to have a much lower rate, to attract more people. Private insurance companies will have to become competitive. That’s the first thing to my mind—it’ll create healthy competition for the private insurance industry.
Secondly, due to Obama’s health care rates being so low, and because it’s going to be mandatory to have insurance, it’s going to increase the amount of people who are insured, which will increase our business. More patients will be able to go for testing that currently do not, because they pay out of pocket. But having so many millions more people insured, it opens so many more avenues for us to serve patients that we’ve never been able to access before.
What’s been a major business challenge, and how are you approaching it?
This constant game of bringing new accounts to the business. You can’t really say, “I have 200 doctors now; these are my clients, and I’ll be okay for the next five years. All I’ll do is service those doctors.” That’ll never work in this business. The doctors might move to a private office. They might move to another state. They might exhaust their patient population. But that’s the nature of the business, and I would never call it an obstacle.
We solve this by constantly having people marketing our services, in the field. We bring in 8-10 accounts per month.
We have over 60 employees, and half of them are in the field—that includes the technologists and sales and marketing. These rest are in-office, doing processing and management. We have Christmas party events and annual company outings, where the whole company participates in activities. We have various company holidays and national holidays that we all celebrate together. It’s a very family-like approach. I like to treat everybody like family, and I think they answer back with the same respect.
What do you love about your job?
I love being part of the process. I’m here early in the morning, before everybody gets in. My most productive hours are from 7:30-9:00 in the morning, and then from 5:00-7:00 pm. That’s when I’m by myself. I can knock out things I need to do. From 9:00-5:00, I’m involved in every department. I love being in the action and solving problems and issues during the day, being involved with routine operations, and being part of the team.
Going Remote
0 comments | Posted by: Terri on May 15, 2012 | Categories:
Five years ago, AnswerConnect was at a crossroads. We had outgrown our small office, spilling over into the entire building. We considered expanding into another office building, perhaps in another city, but as CEO Michael Payne puts it, “The model of having large office complexes filled with people was unscalable and extremely resource intensive. While we knew of no direct competitor in our space offering work at home at that time, we believed that a remote model was more sustainable, more competitive, more scalable, and much more in line with our underlying core values.”
Lead Business Support Associate, Geneva Lieser, was the guinea pig. “It was an exciting thought to work from home. I was all for it,” she recalls. “The savings on commuting alone was huge, 1.5 hrs of my time each day, and about $200 in gas per month.”
The IT team put together software and a computer for Geneva to take home. (That’s another thing we’re really good at: Software not available? Build it!) “It was slow call-volume wise, there were only a few accounts on the new system. Time in between calls was spent chatting with IT on issues I was experiencing, and having software updates added into my computer a lot. It would be hard to count the number of screenshots taken during that period.” Her diligent reporting and testing helped make a solid system for remote associates to work and receive support.
Geneva’s favorite parts of working remotely? “Sweats, waking up 30 min before a shift, not eating out or driving to the office, playing with the critters that inhabit our home on breaks and lunch (they are not allowed in the office of course). Working from home is very addicting.”
Five years later, Geneva’s sentiments are echoed by nearly 300 remote workers taking calls, replying to chats and following up on leads. Her experiment was a success, allowing AnswerConnect to expand both the business and the employee pool significantly. Remote work gave employees the flexibility to work from anywhere in the state and schedule their time around school, kids or other commitments that would normally be obstacles to full-time employment.
“Many people told us that work-at-home would fail because people would not work.” Michael says of those first few days. “In all large groupings of people, be they schools, cities, or companies there will be a few who abuse the rules. However, most people are fundamentally well-intentioned and hard working. Our experience has been that people work just as effectively at home as in an office.”
That decision to trust in the inherent goodness of employees’ intentions continues to pay off. The number of employees working from home is climbing in step with a long list of satisfied clients, enough to make us consider hiring remote workers in other states. We’ve built a thriving virtual community where associates can get instant support—or just chat with fellow work-from-homers—and regularly put together live social events to give co-workers face time. This teamwork combined with our always-innovating IT department adds to AnswerConnect’s unique edge over its competitors.
Geneva couldn’t have put it better: “We all work shoulder to shoulder—remotely—in a really great way.”
Client Spotlight: Shiff Atlanta
Zohar Shiff is owner of Shiff Atlanta, a small-business-oriented IT company, who’s made approachability and user-friendliness his organization’s mantra. Shiff Atlanta is entirely cloud-based, a structure that dovetails with IT’s goal of smoothing the friction between the work you’re trying to do and the work you’re able to do. He’s passionate about making information technology work for, not against, his clients. “I look at computing as a utility,” Shiff says, “like you plug stuff to the wall and you just have electricity. This is behind what we’re doing.”
What is Shiff Atlanta’s primary service and clients?
Outsourced IT for small businesses, across the board. We specialize in doctor’s offices, but we have a mix of clients.
How do you approach your clients’ IT-based problems?
We have a unique service. It’s unlimited remote support and unlimited onsite support for one flat price, calculated per user. So if you increase or reduce the number of users, it is going to change your bill. Other than that, it’s all-inclusive.
We have technicians that are standing by between 8:00 and 10:00 on the phone. Those technicians are qualified enough to resolve any “settings” problem—anything that’s wrong with your settings. But they’re instructed not to spend more than 10-15 minutes on a call. What they do is get into the customer’s computer, they ask to see the problem, and then they start the process of fixing the problem. Most problems are fixed that way.
If the technician doesn’t have the answer or it will take a longer time to fix, he will escalate to Level 2 support. That’s a higher-level engineer who will go further, do deeper troubleshooting, and stay with the problem until it’s resolved. And if that doesn’t work, we move to Level 3 support, with an on-site team. These people will physically come to your site and resolve the issue.
We look at the user first and their computer next. If the user has a computer that is locked up and we clean that computer and it locks up again, and we fix it and it locks up again, and we fix it and it locks up again, then we’ll just replace that computer. It’s not so important to us to find out why or what’s going on with their computer. It’s much more important to have the user go back to work.
How have you seen cloud-based applications affect businesses as a whole?
You’re talking to a cloud-based company. My server is not a physical server. It’s virtual; it’s in the cloud. All of my services that I use for my company are in the cloud: email, file services, accounting. Nothing physical is on my computer. I use my computer daily, and if my computer crashed, God forbid, I would not miss a beat. I’d go to another computer and be up and running in seconds, because everything is in the cloud.
My engineers are almost never in the office. Today is the first day I’m in the office this week, and it’s Thursday. I was meeting with clients this whole week. So were my technicians.
Companies that are more stationary, companies that have an office and work in the office between 8:00-5:00 and have, let’s say, ten people in the office—to live on the cloud could be risky. The T1s and the Comcasts of the world are not as reliable yet. What would happen is, if something does happen to that connection, you are in trouble. If you are a doctor’s office, say, there’s no way you can rely on this. So we have virtual cloud computing. We take a slice of the cloud and bring it to your office. You still pay for it as if it were on Amazon or Google or something. But it’s replicated from the cloud and located in your office. You are completely secure from all sides.
And for start-ups? How does cloud computing help them compete?
I can show entrepreneurs how I can build their whole business with him or her not needing to build any physical presence anywhere, unless they want. And even then, we’ll set them up. If you consider the disaster recovery plans that we have, you can have the whole physical presence crashed by a tornado or a Katrina-type hurricane, and you go to your hotel room and have the whole company run. You almost don’t miss a beat.
Technical work aside, how much PR are you doing to clarify people’s understanding of IT?
Not even close to what we need to.
Why?
Because we’re too busy! I think PR is so important. But when you are starting a company—and my company is not even a year old—you have to run between a lot of different things that you have to do for the company. PR is extremely important and it gets pushed aside all the time.
People think that IT is “Oh, I’ll get a computer, and you’ll help me set that computer up.” Or “I’ve found this server for $1,000 online. Okay, so I’ll buy this stuff and you’ll help me set this up.” IT is no longer that. But a lot of IT companies still work that way. They want you to purchase the equipment from them and then they’ll maintain it for you.
The way I look at it? I look at computing as a utility. Like you plug stuff to the wall and you have electricity, and you never think of what happened to generate that electricity. You never think, “I’ll buy a generator.” You just plug in. Or some people use a septic tank, but most of us just hook up to the sewer line of the city. It’s the same with computing. There’s no point buying infrastructure. You just pay for what you use.
This is behind what we’re doing: “Don’t worry about which computer to buy. Don’t worry about how it’s going to work. You will have the computing power you need and want. If it’s not good enough, you tell me, and we’ll turn the turn it up a notch. If you have 10 people and you’re paying for 20, we’ll turn it down.”
You’ve spent 20 years working in IT. How is the reality of IT now different from your perception of the future, 20 years ago?
To tell the God-honest truth, I thought we’d be further along by now. Sometimes I’m baffled at some stuff that’s not out there. Why don’t I have an iPad built into my car? Why don’t I have a connection between my phone and my iPad? Why do I have to kill my eyes every time I need to dial when I have this beautiful device next to me? I Why am I not able to be on your website, click on your phone number, and then my cell phone dials you, not Skype or something like that? It’s simple stuff.
Client Spotlight: Rambana & Ricci, P.L.L.C.
Elizabeth Ricci is an immigration attorney in Tallahassee, Florida, and managing partner (with her husband, Neil Rambana) of the full-service, multi-lingual immigration law practice Rambana & Ricci, P.L.L.C. As a complex immigration firm, their work concentrates on immigration trial work, employment and family-based immigration. Here, Ricci shares what she loves about immigration law and explains what’s misguided about states’ attempts to reform immigration—cultural issues aside, it’s “a federal issue that cannot constitutionally be regulated by states”—and the damage that’s causing American business and families.
How did your educational background prepare you for immigration law?
I’ve worked and been exposed to immigration law since I was a teenager, having an immigration attorney in my family. I studied under renowned immigration lawyer and scholar Ira Kurzban—he was my professor in law school. As an International Business major, I worked at the U.S. Embassy’s Trade Center in Mexico City, followed by a stint in the Peace Corps in Guatemala.
What is it about immigration that fascinates you?
Doing immigration gives me an opportunity to use my Spanish-language skills and helping families and businesses who improve the economy, healthcare and the environment.
What obstacles do your clients face?
There’s a tremendous amount of bureaucracy within immigration, and we’ve got cultural issues: There are expectations and beliefs about what’s reasonable. A lot of people are taking advantage of immigrants.
The law is not in immigrants’ favor—or Americans’ favor—and right now, we’re in a holding pattern. The backlog [of legal cases] is incredible, so there’s a disincentive for people to legalize. And that hurts American businesses and families.
If the U.S. is in a holding pattern around immigration reform, where do you think we’ll land?
Something’s got to give. We’ve got 10-15 million people to deal with, so a mass exodus won’t do any good. I see something of significance coming up, but exactly what, no one knows.
What obstacles face employers in your service?
They are confused about I-9 compliance, whether they need to enroll in E-verify, how to recruit and retain foreign nationals. It’s also hard to find workers who will do the jobs employers need done. They can’t knowingly hire someone who’s illegal. And there aren’t enough visas to fill the open positions, almost forcing them to hire illegals. Adding more visas to the mix doesn’t hurt citizens—its helps citizens’ own businesses and the economy.
Why has immigration reform become so divisive?
The media portrays immigration in an unfair, untrue light that’s easy to believe when it’s plastered all over TV and newspapers. People don’t take into account, when considering a broken immigration system, the effects not only on the citizen but on an immigrant’s family, spouse, the community at large, on business. It’s easy to form an opinion about something you don’t understand.
How has the past decade affected immigration to the U.S.?
9/11 changed it significantly. That made it more security-based—and with good reason. But people ran with that to an extreme that didn’t help the United States.
The problem with immigration reform by states like Arizona, Georgia and Alabama is that immigration is a federal issue that cannot constitutionally be regulated by states. Although the federal government is not enforcing its own rules does not mean a state has the authority to do so. To demonstrate, Arizona, Georgia or Alabama are not forcing people to pay their federal tax. They would never do that. Why immigration? Because it’s an issue people don’t fully understand and an easy target.
AnswerConnect: Beginnings
If things had taken a different turn, this would have been a much different blog post. Hard to see a poster shop employing hundreds of remote workers or servicing businesses all over the world. But “poster shop” was among the contenders—along with personal alarm company and long-distance service—when co-founders Michael Payne and Monty Wirth were pondering the best business for a start up. Long-distance service won out, but had to switch gears as technology advanced. Below, Michael talks about his experience:
On starting out:
“In 1994, almost 18 years ago. I was 22. I ran and served for one session in the legislature. The campaign part was interesting—it’s more like marketing and business—but the actual governing part…a lot of partisanship and gridlock and anger with each other. Everybody was blaming everyone else, and no one was getting anything done. I thought that business was a way I could do something directly. Maybe it doesn’t impact the same scale, but it impacts customers and employees. I could do and change and make a difference, impact my universe, my community.”
On making the switch:
“It became apparent that long-distance was doomed. I don’t think most people in the industry saw it, but cell phones were coming and the Internet was coming. Most people would keep trying to ride that dying horse, but we just stopped. We stopped all of our marketing, we stopped everything. The world was shifting, so we had to change quickly.
Ninety-percent is picking the right business. If you pick the lemonade stand business, you’ll do about as well as the average lemonade stand. The economics of the business matter a lot. We said, ‘What else can we do?’ We had a call center internally where we answered calls for the customers, but it was only 6 or 8 people, so it wasn’t big. But we were like, ‘Okay, we could do this for more people.’”
Phil Shen and Donny Stevens took a road trip to the infamous garage that was the birthplace of the company. They filmed Michael, Monty and other long-term employees reminiscing over those start-up days:
“We had an incredible team and have done well. For things we can’t control, like the economy, we just had to adapt. And with technology, particularly in the last couple of years, we’ve come a long ways. We have a lot more stable technology and the tools are coming out much faster and better than before. That will help lay the groundwork for a future that’s more differentiated with software. We would like to have more customer tools that are more software-based—not just rely on the labor piece—which should make life better for the customers, employees, everybody.”
From a handful of employees in a garage to hundreds of employees in-office and working from home, AnswerConnect has consistently risen to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers. Change is constant, but the desire for a live, professional person handling calls will never go out of style.