Scott Higley, who has served as VP/national sales director of Quantum Rehab for the last decade, has a new address and job title, having recently become the senior VP of business development for Adorno Mobility, a rehab supplier with multiple locations and a focus on high-end, custom seating & mobility projects.
“It was a really good opportunity,” Higley explained in an interview as he was preparing to move from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, home to Adorno’s corporate headquarters. “It was a new opportunity to go a different way.”
Adorno’s business model differs from that of most nationally based rehab technology suppliers, Higley says, in that “all of our people are therapists. We use all ATPs (assistive technology practitioners). But we are going to kind of go more along the lines of having one (ATP) at every location, then have RTS’s (rehab technology suppliers) underneath them.”
Hello, Adorno! Adorno Mobility, with headquarters in Tennessee, currently has five locations in Texas (Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio), plus a new office in Oklahoma City. Corporate executives include President/CEO Dennis Zamojski, Medical Director Richard A. Silver, VP of Clinical Services Selina Mendieta Morgan, and Director of Education & Therapist Relations Michele Zink Harris. Visit Adorno virtually at www.adorno-rogers.com.
Why the planned change to Adorno’s business model? “You can’t find enough therapists, first of all,” Higley said. “And also, (ATPs are) not salespeople. So they get caught up in doing the whole job again — maybe a (rehab) facility already did (a client assessment), and they look at it and say, ‘This client’s got this issue and this issue.’ It’s too much work that (our ATPs) are doing.”
Not only is it time consuming for Adorno staffers to repeat assessment work already done at a rehab hospital, but Higley pointed out, “With the new rules coming down on PTs and OTs, we’re going to have to pay somebody else to do it anyway, because (the evaluating clinicians) can’t be on our account.”
Higley, however, still expects Adorno to retain its roots. “(Adorno) has been very clinically based, and we’re going to keep the clinical end of it… We’re still going to take a clinical approach,” he said. “When we evaluate someone, we’re not just evaluating a product and putting a client in a product. We’re (looking) at other issues at hand… (such as) why did a condition change? What caused that? Was it an effect from the seating system or an effect from the inability to access controls? Is that why someone’s having an issue? It’s questioning what’s going on, and looking at a broader spectrum, I think.”
Adorno is also looking to expand its national presence. “Right now, our locations are in Texas and Oklahoma,” Higley said. “We’re going to start expanding out (toward) Nashville, where the corporate office moved a couple of years ago.” Among Higley’s top priorities, he said, are “to work with our existing branches to get to the next level, to make sure we’re maximizing people’s time, to look at some efficiencies. And also to start looking at other markets at the same time. I have a lot of knowledge on pricing and working on making sure we’re providing the most appropriate product, but also at the best price.”
So now, Higley finds himself on the other end of the rehab spectrum — becoming a customer after working for a long time for one of the mobility/rehab industry’s biggest manufacturing names.
And of his new employer, he said, “We’re setting ourselves up to live within these new (power mobility) codes that are coming out, and also looking for new opportunities, whether through acquisition or opening up new locations.”
