HealthcareFirst was launched in 1992 and seemed doomed to live a short life. But Bobby Robertson, now president and CEO, saw something its owners didn’t: potential.
“When the Balanced Budget Act of 1996 or 1997 just about wiped out our industry and our little company was closing the doors, it created an opportunity for me to buy it,” Robertson said.
Robertson purchased the company in 1999 and officially relocated the business to Ozark from Texas in 2005. In 2008, the company sold majority ownership to The Riverside Co., which specializes in small- and medium-size businesses.
HealthcareFirst offers Web-based software for home health care and hospice agencies to help them improve billing, treatment and tracking patient outcomes.
“I truly believe the future of health care is in the home. We set out to help these agencies become more efficient,” Robertson says. “In an era when costs have to come down … and you can’t sacrifice the quality of care, what has to happen is you have to be more efficient, and we enable our agencies to balance that.”
As an example, Robertson said one of the company’s software packages allows home health nurses to communicate directly with doctors electronically. All care plans are immediately accessible, and changes can be made immediately.
“We’ve layered some technology into some care models for our agencies that have allowed them to bring those (hospital) readmissions down to 6 (percent) to 9 percent from 28 (percent) to 29 percent,” Robertson says. “You’re talking about the cost of an ER visit that can be $5,000 to $6,000 a day or more. Reducing those 20 points is a very significant savings for the individual.”
The company has grown via acquisitions in recent years, including the June 2010 purchase of Baton Rouge, La.-based Lewis Computer and the January 2011 acquisition of St. Paul, Minn.-based Care Facts Information Systems Inc.
Other ideas that lead to growth often come from employees, Robertson says.
“We’re very open-book management style here, and our employees have offered up some incredible opportunities for us,” he adds. “We’ve created whole product lines that … were a result of one of our employees caring about a customer’s needs.”
Robertson also is a firm believer in giving his employees time to care about the community’s need, and he says all employees are allowed time off to volunteer.
“They care about their communities as well. By enabling them to be a part of these groups and organizations that are devoted to helping, I think it makes our community better, makes them feel better and makes them more productive at work,” he said.
Robertson says one of his proudest moments was last year, after the May 22 Joplin tornado. “We wanted to help, so we told our staff that we were going to make a gift,” he says. “In a single day, we ended up, as a company, giving $10,000 or $11,000,” he said.
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