Anytime a consulting firm grows 138 percent in one year, people are going to notice. Anytime that firm doubles down on that growth by forecasting essentially the same for the following year—more than doubling headcount and more than doubling revenue—people are going to do more than notice. They're going to start paying attention.
And people are paying attention to Avelead, an Atlanta-based firm that helps implement Revenue Cycle and EMR systems for hospital acute and ambulatory health systems. John Goforth, Senior Director, has spent more than 15 years in hospitals and healthcare IT. "Doing integration and implementations was always our bread and butter," Goforth says. "Our focus has been using our technology and our tools to bring healthcare into the modern world."
Avelead was launched in 2015 with humble beginnings before it caught fire in 2017. "Our first few clients were based off of relationships that we already had and then the real growth kicked in with referrals and word of mouth," he says. "Hospital CFOs talk to each quite a bit and the more work we did the more opportunities we received."
Avelead helps hospitals leverage their technology investments to improve patient safety, quality of care, procedural workflow, and overall physician satisfaction by enhancing integration and business intelligence.
Avelead offers three specific solutions in their portfolio, Goforth says. The first is project and program management, wherein, they have a team of program, clinical, financial, and technical project managers who successfully lead these implementations. Second, Avelead focuses on providing technical services consisting of integration and data migration. This includes the management of the master data files. Third is revenue cycle analytics and optimization. This includes monitoring revenue pre-implementation and post-implementation to ensure the health system maintains revenue consistency.
"Our key growth area is that financial and revenue cycle area. Some of the tools that we've developed were made for general implementation use, but we've found that our clients are interested in managing revenue neutrality through implementations," he says. "So, there's been a lot of growth and demand in that area."
Goforth says Avelead employs a precise methodology, which is to identify client requirements and challenges, develop focused project plans, and provide the necessary tools to execute. "The company has developed proprietary tools to put checks and balances in place, ensuring a high quality, implementation process," Goforth says. "This process and tools based approach is used throughout the design, build, testing, and training phases for repeatable results."
Goforth is bullish, to say the least, on the healthcare sector. The firm plans to open an office in Nashville later this year. "Healthcare is something that we know really well and we try to do it in a smart way," he says. "There's opportunity in chaos, and there's a lot of chaos right now. In fact, a lot of the work that we've done is rescue work—where we have to come in and right the ship."
But there's no doubt that client needs in healthcare are shifting. The focus had been on EMR and Meaningful Use but there's been a shift to optimizing technology. "The focus is how do we make sure we're using the systems efficiently, both clinically and financially," Goforth says. "The old systems kept all of that separate but now that's all integrated and clinically driven."
Headquarters: Atlanta
Additional Offices: NA
Service Lines: IT, Financial Consulting
Client Industries: Healthcare
Billable Consultants
2016: 12
2017: 30
2018 (projected): 65
Revenue (in millions)
2016: $2.1
2017: $5
2018 (projected): $10.5
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