Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Reflections on How We Began and How Far We’ve Come

By Members of the Stratasan Team

Every May, our team sets aside time to celebrate. During this month nine years ago, Stratasan was officially established as a company. Our annual celebration looks a bit different this year. We can’t gather off-site as a team. Instead, we look towards the fall as a time for some much-needed face-to-face conversation and merriment. For now, we’ll raise a glass together digitally and share a few words about how far we’ve come and how grateful we are for the team we have today. Please enjoy the reflections below, shared by long-time members of our team.

Leaning into Our Core Values as We Grow

By Jason Moore

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan wrote these lyrics in 1963 (released in 1964) concerning much bigger issues of the world, but they certainly feel applicable for this time of growth at Stratasan. With growth comes change. With change comes challenges. And our challenges are not unique to us. Our goal, though, is to be unique in how we solve them. As we face these challenges on a regular basis, we lean on our core values as a foundation of our approach.

By Jason Moore

Yesterday was tough. The funeral service and visitation for Melissa “Isse” Waddey, former President of LifePoint Health and my dear friend, was held in Nashville. My best estimate is that between 1,200 - 1,500 people were in attendance to pay their respects. As I listened to story after story about how she affected people in a variety of ways, consistent themes emerged.

A very large group of people who I’ve interacted with over the years had heard of Melissa. When her name would come up in conversation with this group, there were always questions around how she was “skyrocketing” through her career or statements of respect from seeing her speak on various topics. “What is her secret?” was a common follow up question.

Understanding, Trust, and Transparency are Three Keys to Success

By Brian Dailey

I recently finished David McCullough's "The Path Between The Seas," an overview of the planning and construction of the Panama Canal. The scale of the human effort put into this project is incomprehensible, but there is much to be learned from it about leadership, organizational alignment, and the importance of communication.

One way to think about alignment and communication is partnership. In the lead up to the construction of the canal, William Gorgas was sent to Panama to deal with the problem of malaria and yellow fever. At the turn of the 20th century, many were still skeptical of the connection between these diseases and mosquitoes. When Gorgas tried to advocate for resources to reduce the mosquito population, he was constantly met with resistance and skepticism. Even though it was his job to reduce the tropical diseases that ravaged the canal worker population, he was unable to do so because his peers viewed him as a challenge to be overcome, not a partner in the construction of the canal.

The first Chief Engineer of the canal, John Wallace, saw Gorgas as an annoyance. As an engineer, he was concentrating on "making the dirt fly" and did not consider Gorgas's medical background to be helpful with this effort. It wasn't until John Stevens became Chief Engineer that Gorgas was taken seriously. Stevens viewed Gorgas as a partner in a humanitarian effort. Once Gorgas was given the requested resources he was able to quickly eliminate cases of yellow fever.

Partnership—among individuals, departments, and other organizations—is pivotal to the success of any venture, whether it's placing a new outpatient clinic or connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic over fifty miles of mosquito-infested jungle. So how do we cultivate partnerships?

By Jason Moore, with original post from XMI

Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed on the topic of how collaboration between technology companies and larger, more established healthcare provider companies (e.g. hospital system, ambulatory surgery company, etc.) propels product innovation.

During this conversation, two prevailing thoughts kept occurring. First, Stratasan has been extremely fortunate with a partner base of clients who have approached the collaboration process with an open mind and generosity to share their expertise and experiences. Second, our core value of “Our Success Is My Success” extends further outside of our walls than I believe we intended when we first adopted it.

“We’ll figure it out.”

This is a phrase that has oft been uttered in the conference rooms and offices at Strasasan. Healthcare as an industry may have an image of being old and staid, but as we have discovered, there are new opportunities every day for creative solutions to shine. We have relied heavily on our team’s creativity and innovation (well described in another blog post by Morgan Atkins) to develop new tools and products to serve our customers.

Hence, in the last quarter of 2017, we recognized that this phrase is an important part of our company culture, making it one of our core values.

By Jason Moore

2017 has been a banner year for Stratasan on many fronts. We are approaching our seven year anniversary on May 18 and our team continues to adapt and evolve as we prepare for our next stages of growth.

Some of the notable internal occurrences from this past year include: two employees (Jason Haley, Tony Camarata) celebrated their six year Strataversary; three employees (Dan Foreman, Lee Ann Lambdin, Morgan Atkins) celebrated their five year Strataversary; one new product was released (Launch Pathway); four children were born and/or adopted; we moved into a new office on April 1; we held a crock pot competition (Scott Burns was named the champion); we had zero unscheduled downtime (thanks to Marcus Young and our fantastic Dev team!!); and ten new Stratanauts joined our team.