History
How do banking, filmmaking, cycling, hunting, soccer, welding, litigation, ATMs, cooking and guitars connect for America's not-for-profit hospitals?
The answer is at PHNS: a company whose leadership is driven to find the right solutions for complicated hospital challenges. PHNS offers HealthCaring solutions as a way to help hospitals get "business healthy."
What strange chain of events led to the establishment of a company that believes that hospitals could deliver better, safer and cheaper patient care through some simple technology training and process changes for nurses, doctors and administrators?
It started on an airplane.
Serendipity in the Sky
In 1991, Chick Young was an established pioneer in information processing in the financial industry, and he was looking for a new challenge. Rick Kneipper was at the top of his game as both a lawyer and businessman, having counseled several successful health and biomedical companies. A serendipitous meeting on an airplane began a working relationship that came to serve as the foundation for PHNS. Young and Kneipper founded the innovative healthcare services company together in 1999, aiming to revolutionize the out-of-date, lumbering industry with new technology and culture paradigm shifts.
By founding PHNS, Young and Kneipper developed a business model that is unique compared to others in the marketplace, and they knew it would work, having spent a year conducting detailed research and speaking with the top experts in healthcare and investment banking. The idea was well received, but Kneipper and Young knew that in order for this conceptual business model to become a reality, they needed to put together an experienced team with an extensive background in business and technology. That’s when they combined well-respected professionals from their past work experiences to form the core executive team at PHNS.
It was easy to see that the business of healthcare was sick and that the industry would have a difficult time handling electronic information as the digital age approached. To address this vast gap in healthcare's capabilities, PHNS soon developed and began delivering a comprehensive set of HIM services to two hospitals within the McLaren Health Care system based in Flint, Michigan. With commitment from the hospital's leadership, the facilities served as the alpha and beta sites for the implementation of PHNS' e-Medical Records Management Services. Based on a guarantee of accountability and reduced costs, PHNS' partnership with McLaren resulted in better patient care delivery, improved patient record access and unparalleled customer satisfaction from patients, employees and physicians.
To summarize, it is the first of many success stories.
Creative HealthCaring
Hospital administrators know that they need ways to prove accountability, safety and assurance to many audiences. The issues are complicated: how do you introduce ideas safely into the hospital environment?
PHNS meets the challenge with creativity. Re-engineering the way technology aids information flow across a healthcare system is something that requires a unique approach. We believe in not only transforming the tools but shifting the culture as well so that personnel who use those tools do so effectively and efficiently. After all, a hospital is people not machines.
Creativity reigns at PHNS and in the everyday lives of the company's leadership. Co-founder Chick Young played guitar in a rock band and hunts wild game. Co-founder and CAO Rick Kneipper welds metal sculptures in his backyard and founded a not-for-profit to support independent films. If one follows by example, our leadership proves that creativity at heart is found somewhere “outside the lines”.
Unlike its Competitors
PHNS stands alone in the industry because of what we don't do. Unlike our competitors, we do not sell software, and we are not a former accounting firm now offering IT consulting. Plus, PHNS only serves hospitals.
Together, the talents of the PHNS leadership team and our more than 1,700 FTEs produced revenues of approximately $230 million for fiscal year 2008 while helping over 400 hospital customers across the nation save much-needed funds on their own bottom line. The $60 million plus that PHNS has generated in cost savings for its hospital partners is proof that by aligning goals and objectives with its hospital partners, we are able to generate cost savings while improving services by introducing new technologies.
Creativity is the only key to solving the problems of a lumbering, ancient industry like healthcare. From our people to our business model and practices, we prove that a little non-standard thinking is what it takes to improve the efficiency, cost savings, culture and overall patient care of our hospital partners.
PHNS is proud to provide HealthCaring solutions so that hospitals and other healthcare organizations can focus on the business of caring for others. It's at the core of what we do, and it's what sets us apart.