Adam Torres and Matt Seefeld discuss healthcare business revenue cycles.
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Show Notes:
MedEvolve is a top provider of data-driven solutions that help healthcare businesses optimize their revenue cycles and medical billing teams to lower money collection costs, increase efficiency, and enhance revenues. In this episode, Adam Torres interviewed Matt Seefeld, Executive Vice President at MedEvolve, Inc. and Founder of myLifeLink. Explore the MedEvolve story and how it collaborates with tens of thousands of physicians and 50+ provider organizations nationwide.
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About Matt Seefeld
Matt Seefeld began his career as a management consultant helping healthcare providers solve the complex strategic and tactical problems facing the industry everyday. By learning about the vast problems facing healthcare providers financials and operations and seeing the inefficient ways both clients and consultants alike collect and analyze data, Matt made a pivot in his career and took the charge of developing software solutions that structure data and workflows in ways that allow businesses to make informed and actionable decisions. Matt’s goal was to build scalable business intelligence and automated workflow solutions to help end users quickly determine and manage clinical quality, cost, and overall operational and financial opportunity for health care organizations. Matt continues to take his years of healthcare consulting turnaround experience partnered with cutting edge technology expertise to deliver a comprehensive package of solutions and services to his growing network of clients.
Matt continues to allocate a large amount of his time advising HCIT companies on their strategic positioning and direction including how to navigate the often complex sales cycle and market barriers companies face when trying to enter or expand into the healthcare vertical. Matt also invests in seed and early stage tech companies and plays an active role in their growth and strategy.
About MedEvolve, Inc.
MedEvolve empowers healthcare organizations with effective intelligence solutions that provide unmatched transparency, automation and accountability. MedEvolve’s workflow automation and advanced analytics solutions reduce administrative burden and ensure staff are not only productive, but effective in the work effort they put in and that they are achieving the expected results. Additionally, MedEvolve’s effective intelligence solutions enable a remote workforce with task management, tracking and virtual communication tools that integrate directly with the practice management software. Increase output and net collections and reduce overhead costs with effective intelligence from MedEvolve.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. All right, sir, I today I have Matt Seafield on the line and he is Executive Vice President at Metabo Inc.
And also founder of my Lifelink. Welcome to the show. Welcome. Yes. I’m excited to be on the show today. All right, Matt. So excited to learn more about Metabo and also my Life link. And to get us started, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with our mission matters minute. So, Matt, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts.
That’s our mission. Matt, what mission matters to. Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it in two parts cuz I’ve got a mission here at Metabo and I’ve got a, a great at my life link. When I think of Metabo’s mission is that, you know, as a software company that has to live in the services world of healthcare which has been exciting for, for years, is that we want to create a culture where the employees can come to work every single day and powered to do better today than they did.
Y. And the reason they can do that is because the organization actually has access to the information that allows them to be recognized, rewarded, and retained for the hard work that they do. And, and as a result, you have employees per life. And I think that’s really when I break down that evolve is, is that, People that are out there in the healthcare revenue cycle space trying to get claims paid right?
They need to be recognized for all the work they do, and they need to be rewarded and therefore retained in this world of labor now and all the craziness, and I’m sure we’ll get a lot of this in the podcast. This is really, really important. The. my Lifelink side. You know, as a, as a person in recovery myself, I had five years of sobriety in the fall of last year.
I recognized the, the limitations that we have in society to connect people that are suffering from physical, emotional and or behavioral addiction. And so when I founded my Lifelink, I wanted a way for, for individuals to really find people like. , right? And, and by opening up that flexibility people are able to actually connect globally and start the healing process.
Start to encourage each other to stay sober start to put their lives back together, start to build something extraordinary and transformational that they never thought was possible when they were in the, the throws of addiction. So I always say that if there are folks listening who need help or have family members or friends that need help, check out my life.
It’s a free app. It’s on Google and Apple, iTunes easy to to download and install. We’d love to have have ’em in our. Oh, that’s wonderful. Love bringing mission-based individuals on the line to share their mission, you know, why they do what they do, what motivates them to get out there and make a difference in the world, which you obviously are so great to have ya.
And I guess just to just to get us kick it off here. So let’s, let’s, let’s go into Metabo just to start. But we will circle back to my lifelink at some point. Cause I do wanna, I do wanna get a little bit more information on that, but Metabo, so providing data solutions for healthcare businesses.
You’re, you are addressing revenue cycles, medical billing. Tell us more about the company. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, Metabo has been around for a long time. I was founded by a couple of surgeons. More than 20 years ago, started out really as a, as a billing software company which morphed into a services component.
Cause a lot of physicians didn’t wanna do the billing themselves. They wanted to outsource it. But what we’ve really focused on the last few years is around building more workflow automation tools that actually drive work to individuals and then measures that work. You know, did they do the right job?
Right? And, and so you start to think about, You know? Mm-hmm. employees across the country. Right across the world. Right. You know, there’s this, there’s this new quiet, quitting. People are act, you know, I heard a term the other day called Acting your wage. If you pay me $19 an hour, I’m only gonna give you $19 an hour worth of work, right?
Mm-hmm. , I’m gonna do just enough to not get fired. Right? So there’s this like pandemic. Of, of, of latency right now in the workforce. And what we’ve discovered is by, by measuring people in their work, we can actually recognize the winners, the ones who really are doing the best job they can. And we can actually economically reward and therefore retain ’em.
And so that’s where we focus. We built this software that I’m talking about to save our own RCM company, our services company, you know quite a few years ago with losing profit. And if you think of all the challenges in healthcare now that are impacting provider profit margin, right? You’ve got 15, 20% increase in supply chain cost increase in labor costs.
You’ve got Medicare cutting reimbursement, commercial managed care starting to cut reimbursement, right? Doctors are working five times harder today, or less money than they did 20 years ago. It’s not a pretty picture, right? So what we feel is that if we can empower the. To move heaven and earth to do the best job they can for their revenue cycle.
We’re gonna give back as much margin as we possibly can. Can’t give it all back cuz of all the, the things that are going on in this, this world of, of healthcare and but I can certainly give back to some and I can create a place where people wanna work, right? If we’re gonna put eight hours of work in love, what you do, be proud of what.
tell your kids about what you do. Tell your friends and family, right? Let’s get back to self-actualization as a society where we can set goals and we become obsessed with those goals and start to achieve those goals, right? Mm-hmm. , and that’s, you know, you gotta be able to measure though, right? It’s like I tell people when I’m speaking at shows.
If you wanna lose weight, you gotta set specific goals. You have to have ways to measure, right? Calories, exercise steps, whatever, right? All these things that we’re trying to do requires. to tell us whether we’re doing the right job. I mean, I just got one of those aura rings and I’m fascinated by it now because mm-hmm.
it tells me how I sleep. Like I woke up yesterday and it’s like, basically it didn’t say you’re gonna have a bad day, but it was basically like, you’re probably gonna need to rest today. Mm-hmm. because of the lack of sleep and because of all the activity you did Saturday. Right. So why aren’t we doing this in the workforce?
Right. And a lot of companies do do this. Healthcare seems to always. 10 to 20 years behind and, and right now post Covid there, there’s just no luxury to wait anymore. We’ve gotta do it. And that’s what metabo’s about is, is, is delivers software that measures people so that you can recognize, reward, and retain your best ones.
can you tell me a little bit more about this? Like just go maybe a level deeper on what it means to empl, empower employees at the workplace? Specifically how Metabo’s doing it because I, I think it sounds good and it, and it’s something that I don’t think anybody would hear that intuitively be like, no, I don’t wanna empower my employees.
Right. Nobody’s gonna say that, but I would, I would hope. But, but like, what does it actually, what does that look like in, in. Yeah, so, so if you think about like the Ritz Carlton or the Walt Disney model, right? Mm-hmm. , they figured it out that, that you don’t focus on the customer first. , right? That’s where businesses fail so much, right?
They focus on the customer experience. What they figured out is you focus on the employees. It’s called internal service quality. And so if you focus on the internal service quality, whereby you actually can measure people, empower people, recognize, reward people, then what ends up happening is those people drive the external service value, which is your customer experience, which then drives revenue and.
And I think a lot of businesses still don’t get that. Right. And, and, and healthcare, like where we live, because we have a large RCM company where we, you know, we do, you know, rev cycle functions for lots of, of specialties all over the us. We know it. We have a hundred plus people. I mean, I have 48 people in my call center, so how do I mm-hmm.
how do I create a culture that empowers those individual? through recognition and reward systems to wanna do the best job they can. Whether they’re taking patient phone calls or they’re following up on Blue Cross denials, or they’re coding claims, or they’re scheduling patients, right? They’re, they’re all being paid the day to do a job.
Right? But where’s that next carrot? You know? And I always get, it’s funny, a trade shows a lot of times I’ll, I’ll be speaking and someone’s like, well, I already paid ’em 19 bucks an hour. I mean, isn’t that good enough? That’s the mistake people. . It’s not good enough. Right? Good enough. I mean, that’s what you pay them.
But for the folks that actually go up and move, you know, go beyond to really do the best job they can. What happens if you pay them a little bit more or do it as form a point system if they want to? You know, we have, you want the new iPhone? Great. You have enough points to go upgrade to it. You want a PTO day?
Great. There’s lots of ways to reward people. Mm-hmm. . But the, the, the point is, it’s the recognition, right? And if you think about the Maslow of hierarchy of needs, what, what we’re talking about is not the bottom anymore of the triangle, right? Everybody assumes safety. Right? It’s all assumed now, right? But what we’re talking about is this culture where people need to be, be.
Right, it’s self-esteem. Why? How many likes do I have? How many listens do I have? Right? Are people recognizing me? Right? And what we’re trying to get back to is the top of the triangle, which is self-actualization, which means I’m gonna actually set goals for myself, and I’m going to work to achieve those goals.
I’m gonna do every action possible to get the outcome. I hope. Hope I get right, desired. , and that’s what I’m talking about with empowerment, is recognition and rewards for people to wanna do it. I mean, some people say, well, that’s an interesting social experiment, you know, maybe it is. Mm-hmm. . But I gotta believe that if I’m spending eight hours a day or more at a job and I calculate that over my life, I certainly don’t want to be in a situation where I don’t feel like my, my company values me, you know, and doesn’t recognize the work that I’m having to.
And, and, you know, giving back a little bit more to employees in this model, the, the compounded roi, the return on investment is huge. , you know, and I, I actually came up with this idea back in 2003 when I was working for a large I was in a consulting firm, Pricewaterhouse, at the time, doing a big turnaround for a large health system in the Northeast.
And you know, I said, you know, if, if, if these company bills a dollar and they expect 96 cents back basically per contract, and they’re only getting 90 cents back, what if I were to give a penny back to the employees that do the best job possible? What would that be? Way more than a penny in. , right? So it’s like you, you can keep collecting 90 cents or you can collect 94 cents and just give one of those cents back to your employees.
Mm-hmm. , everybody wins, right? But you gotta go beyond the traditional employment model of I pay you $19 an hour and that’s what you get, and you get your two weeks of vacation and blah, blah, blah. You can’t do that anymore. This whole world, workforce world has changed literally. Right. I. It’s not even a generational thing.
I don’t even, I used to make fun of the, the Gen Zs and the millennials. I don’t even do that because it’s not even generational. I mean, this is all generations has changed. Mm-hmm. , my, my Gen X has changed the way they work and what they expect and work-life balance. Right. And flexibility. It’s all changed.
So we gotta adopt new models and new ways of thinking. . Yeah. And I, and I, and I like the way that you mentioned the $19 an hour or just looking at pay. It’s not really, I mean, that, that’s a piece of the, the overall compensation and the overall like employee experience, but it’s just a piece of it and what you’re talking about, it makes, so, it makes so much sense that people are now especially now that people have had time to kind of.
While, while things were shut down, it was almost like a reset and people were thinking about, am I on the right path? Am I doing something that I actually wanna spend my time on? And they started thinking about work as a, you know, a piece of their life that’s more than just where I go to collect that 19 bucks
So, yeah, there’s a, that’s right. It’s great. It’s a great timing and it’s a great great program. I. Complete sense. I wanna, I wanna spend a little bit of time now. I wanna, I want to talk for a bit about my lifelink. So I think that’s a really interesting and needed project. Like now how did this, how did this come about?
Like, what was the idea or the impetus for this? Yeah, so, so I I had struggled for years with, with alcohol. You know, when I finally got to that point of, of, you know, they call it spiritual bottoms, right? Where I realized like I had to go away to, to disconnect from the world and really start to learn how to live you know, a quality of life without, without trying to numb myself out with, with alcohol.
I checked into a, a recovery center prestigious recovery center, ironically, and. . Remember when I, I went through the program, it was great. I felt empowered and when I checked out, the lady was checking me out and she said, Hey, call this guy, he’s an alumni and he lives in San Diego. And I said, cool.
Is he sober? And she looked at me and she’s like, well, I hope so. And then I said, well, what does he do for a living? Does, I mean, is he a surfer? Cuz I, I’m a surfer. Could we go surf together and talk about recovery? Like I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a dad, I’m a coach. And she’s like, oh man, those would be great things to know.
And I’m thinking to myself as a former entrepreneur, , how can I go on to match.com or cars.com and put in all these attributes and match with my ideal person or car? But where’s the, where do I match with people in my zip code who figured out a pathway to recovery in a healthy, happy life? Where’s that app
It doesn’t exist. Mm-hmm. . So hence my entrepreneurial brain took over and I said, I gotta put this out there. And that’s what, that’s the whole experience, right? The whole experience was is go and find people. You can. Right. I can’t relate to a war veteran who’s been incarcerated, who had a dui who’s been unemployed for 10 years.
I can’t re, I can relate that he, he may be an alcoholic, but beyond that, I don’t, can’t relate to all the other lifestyle things. Right? The social determinants. So how does he find somebody like him who’s figured it out, right? And they may not live in San Diego. Maybe they live in new. . Right? But it doesn’t matter, right?
Cuz it’s all virtual now. Virtual connectivity and then, and when, when tribes that are similar can get together, that’s where healing really begins. And that’s really what we’ve done as we’ve created a sober tribe here where people can create groups and specialization around topics and lifestyle and jobs and, and everything is just try to figure out how we’re gonna, how we’re gonna better our.
And what’s been really fascinating about this community is how so much of this is focused now on emotional sobriety is that we have lots of forums now where people are realizing that it’s not about alcohol or drugs or exercise or workaholism. It’s about trying to escape from feeling. And we as humans like to escape from feeling we don’t want to feel bad, right?
And so, mm-hmm. , a lot of us will numb ourselves. , we like to look at the, why are you feeling bad? Are you creating a future that hasn’t existed yet? Doesn’t that hasn’t happened yet? Are you resenting the past that already happened? Are you not living in present moment? And so starting to bring emotions has been a huge healing factor for, for our community.
And then really the last component of it is it’s just bringing a platform where people contract the things that they. Right. So you can track all the things you do throughout the day to help yourself, like exercise, meditate, read and then service work, right? Big thing in recovery for me is giving back, right?
Building self-esteem for me is about being selfless. So, you know, when I coach high school track or I coach little league, right? I’m clicking the button. I served others, I complimented people. I encouraged people. It not only reinforces to me the things I’m doing to stay recovering, it’s showing the community the work that I’m putting into staying.
And that’s the other thing, right, is it is making sure that people, people understand that this takes work, right? It takes work. You probably, in your mind right now, can think of at least three or four people that have an issue with either emotional, physical, or behavioral addiction, right? Some of which may be focused on that and some may not get it yet, right?
The statistics are alarming. And you look at now with social media, in fact, you and I were talking about this before we got started, right? Look at our, our kids, right? Always. always connected. My kid’s going off to a sixth grade camp with no technology for a week, and I’m thinking to myself like, are these kids gonna be okay?
Right? Mm-hmm. , think about it. Mm-hmm. , that was their dopamine checks, right? iPads, YouTube, TikTok, right? You take that away. Yeah. It’s like, take an alcohol away from a a, an alcoholic. So how do we get around that? How do we get ahead of that with this new generation of folks that are gonna have so many more things to fall addiction to?
Right. Virtual reality, I mean, you. All of it’s trying to escape from feeling and escape from living in present moment. Let’s get back to living in present. Well, I think it’s a, it’s a great idea and it’s a great I, I’m glad that your entrepreneurial brain kicked in and, and created my life link so that men, many can, many can benefit from it and really connect with each other.
So I think it’s a great idea. That being said, Matt we’re about, Out of time on today’s interview, but I’d like to give you the opportunity to leave some contact info if somebody wants to learn more about Met Evolv Inc. And also if somebody wants to learn more and get involved with the My Life Link community, I mean, what’s the best way for people to do that?
Yeah, I think I, I mean, social media wise, I, I, LinkedIn is probably my heaviest platform, so I think anyone interested could certainly hit me up, search for my name at Feld and, and you know, I’ve got a lot of my stuff around that Evolv and, and my life link on there. I think that, you know, There’s so much, there’s so much opportunity and, and help.
I mean, both these topics we talked about are huge, but mm-hmm. , I, I just want to press that, that on the, on the Metabo side is that, you know, we are all impacted by the deficiencies in healthcare as consumers of healthcare. And so we have to remember that, that, that every one of us consumes healthcare in some form or fashion.
And if this industry continues to be inefficient and continues to, you know deplete margin, it impacts all of. , right? So we have to look at the one thing that we control, which is people, right? And, and the one thing that I’ll try to real quickly bridge Lifelink and the stuff we’re doing in Metabo to is it’s around looking at the human condition.
If people woke up in the morning with purpose, living in present moment, doing the best job they can with the things they want to be doing, right? Imagine what they would do as individuals and imagine where society would be. And while that sounds aspirational, right, I do believe that everybody has that.
but they’ve gotta, they’ve gotta look at it and they have to realize it’s hard work. It’s not easy. Mm-hmm. , there’s not a button for it, is that you have to really, you know, think about what do I want to do? And once you decide what you want to do and what you want to be, get obsessed about it and do everything you possibly can to get that outcome right.
I tell my kids I coach you do not control outcomes in life. Guys. You control actions and if you do the right actions, you’ve got a good chance of getting the outcome. And so that’s, that’s really what I would, I would leave you at is, is let’s get back to a society where, where, where we wanna actually be achievers again, consistently.
Fantastic. And Matt, we’ll put your, your LinkedIn profile and all that contact info into the show notes so that our audience can just really click on the links and head right on over there and and connect. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters or connecting with the show or the platform in general, Hello, up bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs and executives, having them share their mission the reason behind their mission and really what we can all learn from that so that we can all grow together.
The Mission Matters platform is about us all learning and growing together. If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. And Matt, really it has been a pleasure.
Thanks again for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Oh, I appreciate it too.
