Tell us about your role, and the teams you oversee.
Our team is responsible for the new real estate platform that we are currently rolling out to maintain and improve operations in all non-acute hospital facilities - facilities where the patient is on site for 23 hours or less. We have many instances of high acuity care spaces that are in outpatient facilities, both on and off campus, such as medical office buildings that might house an infusion center, cardiac center, ambulatory surgery center, or high-end imaging centers with linear accelerators. The new program we're implementing will allow us to manage property data across the board. The system will provide one source of truth moving forward, when it comes to properties and leasing data.
How does the work your team do impact patient care delivery?
Patient care is what it’s all about. Patient healthcare delivery and reimbursement are derived in large part from the patient’s overall healthcare experience. We must consider:
- How is a building developed?
- How is it maintained?
- How do the parking lot and landscaping look as patients drive in?
- Are the clinicians within that practice able to operate in a space that is welcoming to our patients and tenants?
We can maximize dollars that these practitioners and hospital systems have available to them through proper lease and contract negotiations, so they can use those savings on other patient care priorities that answer these questions in a positive way and provide optimal patient experience.
Describe the path you took to arrive in your current role.
I kind of fell backwards into the real estate field after beginning my career in the United States Army. After leaving the military, I went to work for a real estate company in Indianapolis, then served as director of real estate at a big hospital in South Carolina for about 10 years. I later returned to Indiana and took a job with a developer which provided me with a fantastic opportunity to learn the developer side of the business.
I’ve worked exclusively in specialty healthcare real estate for the last 20+ years and joined Medxcel in 2023. I hold three managing broker licenses for three different states, have my undergraduate degree in business, and an MBA. Outside of the military, real estate is all I’ve worked in, and I love what I do.
How do you collaborate with other areas of the business?
In my experience working in real estate operations, we collaborate with facilities, environmental services, our planning, design and construction groups, finance and accounting teams, and our transactional teams such as tax, insurance, risk, and liability. We act as the nucleus that understands how each of those pieces need to fit together to improve the net operating income and operational efficiencies of a property and we do that through process control and best practices. We understand what's usual and customary from a real estate perspective when it comes to vendor management, cost containment, and property and contract negotiation. We unify those varied groups and get them all rowing in the same direction to understand the mission of the property.
What's unique about what Medxcel brings to the table when it comes to real estate management?
What's unique about Medxcel is that we bring healthcare expertise to the table. Every decision has to balance back to our core mission of healthcare delivery. When you're talking about environmental services, construction, or cost of business, you need to understand how to equate that back to what that campus needs to serve its patients.
I've only been on the healthcare side of real estate, and Medxcel has only been on the healthcare side of real estate. But taking that one step further—I've been on the third-party owner/developer side, so I understand how they think. I've also been on the hospital side, so I understand how they think.
Where Medxcel is unique is that we translate that data in ways that make sense to healthcare leaders. We speak healthcare.
How would you describe the culture at Medxcel?
The culture at Medxcel is collaborative, born out of a need for efficient healthcare management and oversight, patient satisfaction, and patient-driven care. At the core of our culture is that desire to provide the ultimate patient-provider experience. We bring in expertise that a lot of specialty firms can't offer because they haven't been involved in the healthcare industry to the extent we have. It's the ability to translate data from the patient/hospital/provider experience to the corporate real estate world where Medxcel adds a lot of value.
The collaborative culture here sets individuals up for success and provides healthy personal boundaries with time to enjoy family and friends through a generous amount of paid time off each year. Everyone I’ve worked with is extremely understanding that we all have things going on in our personal lives, and we set each other up for success.
How does Medxcel impact the communities we serve?
Medxcel was born from the healthcare community and continues to serve the healthcare community. I don't know that there is any other singularly more beneficial way of serving communities than ensuring that everyone has a happy, healthy, safe place to receive medical care.