Since entering the industry in 2014, Numotion CEO Mike Swinford has embraced complex rehab technology’s (CRT) mission, its end users, and even its often-complicated funding processes.
Now more than three years into CRT, Swinford has closely examined the industry with the goal of equipping it to move forward. He’s authored a new white paper — Transforming the State of CRT from Within — that challenges industry stakeholders and offers an ambitious, measured strategy.
The white paper puts forth five directives:
• Transform with innovative models
• Advocate and educate with relentless and unified focus
• Strengthen and enforce compliance standards
• Promote connected and integrated outcomes
• Apply and leverage contemporary technology
Each of the directives ends with “What you can do to help” action items.
Excellence Beyond the Industry
The scale of Swinford’s vision is evident with the very first directive: He recommends that CRT look beyond its own boundaries for examples of excellence in other industries.
“For any company in any industry, that’s actually a best practice,” Swinford told Mobility Management. “Always benchmark, and do not get too laser focused on your industry. Obviously, we have very pressing issues in our industry that we need to address. But there are so many best practices as technology continues to evolve, whether it’s big data and analytics or cloud computing. There are so many different best practices to draw upon from multiple companies and multiple industries that we’d be foolish not to.”
Another reason that CRT should look beyond its boundaries: That’s what CRT clients do.
“I purposefully made the customer experience the center of this white paper,” Swinford explained. “Every one of our customers certainly looks outside of our industry when they’re comparing the service experience that they have within our industry versus outside the industry. I think it’s human nature, whether we’re receiving personalized service at Starbucks or at a Marriott or on Amazon. Those are things we reflect upon as we have different experiences.”
Choosing the White Paper Route
A white paper isn’t the most common vehicle for delivering such a vision and message, but Swinford said he and his Numotion team chose this format for its reach.
“It is a vehicle that gives us the opportunity for broad reach to a number of constituencies,” he said. “We at Numotion have had ongoing conversations with payors who are strategic partners of ours, with referral sources, with different manufacturing partners, and many of the items within the white paper are ongoing topics of discussion, collaboration and projects in which we’re investing capital and are starting to really do some things in unique and transformational ways.
“So I saw this as a vehicle to reach a broader audience, to promote dialog and to really drive some outside-in thinking. But also to provoke people in this industry, whether it’s to have discussion with us at Numotion or to have discussions with other constituencies that other companies work with. I just think we really need to be talking about where we think we can take this industry to better the experience for the end user rather than constantly talking about today’s problems transactionally.”
Swinford said he isn’t ignoring current CRT challenges, but used the white paper to also take a broader view of the landscape.
“We have to solve today’s problems today,” he said. “But if we’re never talking about where we want to take this industry collectively and how we really need to work across boundaries and collaborate, it’s going to be tough to get there.”
Provoking Dialog
Swinford said he doesn’t mind if people don’t agree with every point the paper makes.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some people interpret some of the points differently; that’s absolutely fine, with the intent of provoking dialog and idea generation on where we can take this industry,” he said. “Where do we need to improve this industry, especially so end users benefit? They deserve the best technology, and they deserve the fastest response times and the fastest turnaround times. They deserve to live life to the absolute fullest.”
The white paper is being widely distributed and is available for download on the Numotion website (Numotion.com/TransformingCRT). Numotion also created an e-mail address ([email protected]) specifically to encourage and collect comments.
“I will be sharing [the paper] personally with some of the companies and individuals who I think share these values, share this perspective, who we could partner with to really try to advance this agenda,” Swinford said.
“I’m open to hearing other people’s ideas on what they think are opportunities to improve the industry and opportunities to collaborate across different boundaries. I hope it acts as a basis for dialog around how this industry is ripe for transformation.”
