Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Matt Seefeld, Executive Vice President at MedEvolve, Inc. Founder of myLifeLink

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Matt Seefeld joined MedEvolve as EVP and Head of Effective Intelligence in 2017, bringing with him more than 20 years of management consulting experience in the healthcare industry. He has extensive expertise in assessing, designing, and implementing process improvement programs and technology development across the entire revenue cycle.Matt began his career with Stockamp & Associates, Inc. (now Huron Consulting) and worked for both PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Deloitte Consulting LLP in their healthcare and life sciences practice lines. In 2007, he developed an intelligent workflow automation and analytics solution and founded Interpoint Partners, LLC, where he served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. He sold the company to Streamline Health in 2011 and continued as a senior executive.In 2019, Matt founded and developed a free mobile app, My Life Link, which offers a sober community to those suffering from addiction.Learn More:https://medevolve.com/https://www.mylifelinkapp.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-seefeld-521319/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-matt-seefeld-executive-vice-president-at-medevolve-inc-founder-of-mylifelink

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us, Matt Seafeld, who's the executive vice president at MedEvolve and the founder of My LifeLink. Matt, welcome to the program. Mike, I'm excited to talk with you today. Yeah, I want to hear all about what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and all that

kind of good stuff, because I think that's really neat to hear about people's passion. But I want to dive into your story, what's your background? And then how did you get into this industry in the first place? Yeah, absolutely. So I was born in Chicago, raised in Northern California outside of San Francisco. I am an identical twin brother. People always ask me, are you really as if I'm lying about that? I definitely am. He's in New Hampshire. And, you know, after college, it's interesting. I didn't really

know what I wanted to do. And my dad said, try consulting. So I ended up with a boutique healthcare consulting firm right out of undergrad. And I kind of jumpstarted my career. And here I am 24 years later, still in healthcare, still focusing on, you know, trying to create margin for health care providers in this country that, frankly, the challenges are even, greater today than they were 23, 24 years ago when I started. Well, A, isn't it an interesting how people can speak into our lives and we should sit up and take notice, whether it's mom, dad, friend, you know, a mentor, but I think that is so neat. And you dug in and learned it and stuck with it and did just flip, flop all over the place.

So, you know, having that industry knowledge for so long now gives you a great perspective. So let's talk a little bit about that you mentioned health care, industry. And I think a lot of red flags can go up in people's minds like, wait a minute, we can help the healthcare organizations make more money. Don't they make enough money? Are they confused about health care to begin to begin with? So give us a little bit of a thumbnail sketch of what you do and how you do it for health care organizations. Yeah, absolutely. I was chuckling when you said, don't they make enough money. The problem right now is that they don't make money. And it's getting, it's getting worse. And the challenge with the, the pressure is on

margin now in health care. It's already impacting the consumers, which we are all consumers of healthcare. You know, my entrepreneurial spirit took off in 2007. I left Deloitte and Touche at the time to start my first healthcare software company. And the reason I did that was I wanted to have a faster way to diagnose where there are issues in the revenue cycle. And in healthcare, that's basically from the point the claim gets billed to the point that it hopefully gets paid. And, you know, there's big gaps in the systems that are being used have been used and are used today in transmitting claims to the insurance companies and also to the patients for their portion of liability. So, you know, I'm one of those guys that can't really sit still when inadequacy is right in

front of me. Yeah. I'm not creating things that are brand new. I like to look at, and I give this advice to anyone thinking about an entrepreneurial venture is it doesn't have to be the one thing no one's thought about. most of the successful entrepreneurs are looking at things that are out there already, but they're not adequate. Yeah. And we can still the gap. You know, the word innovation pops into my mind when you're describing that because I think there's two sides of innovation. One is this is this new widget that

no, the world's not heard of. I'm innovating this, you know, new thing. Or, hey, here's this process that's already in place. Let's innovate on it. Let's make it bigger, faster, you know, smarter, more efficient. And that's what you're talking about is, hey, here's this machine. And if we can help innovate and create some efficiencies and operational efficiencies, that will help then money or revenue or expenses from falling through the cracks. Absolutely. That's it. And I think that, you know, I see so much of the opportunity in health care is it will be filled

with innovative technology. The tricky part with health care is that there's a lot of people in process still involved. You know, I was speaking at a few conferences in the last month and everyone's talking about AI and how AI is going to change their lives. And one person even went so far saying, you know, well, you know, we won't need humans anymore in healthcare, you know, to build claims. And I chuckled. I said, what are you, are you planning to get the big insurance companies totally aligned with the providers anytime soon? Because that's the

challenge, Mike, is that the payers and the providers and the consumers are not aligned, right? The payers are making a lot of money. You can see that. Right. The providers are going out of business. And then the consumer stuck in the middle. And so you really have to look at how do we create capacity in health care capacity within people. And this starts to kind of transform into what I've really learned over the last few years about the human condition and this concept of self-actualization. Is it, do we really know what we want to be? Right. And that could be career, could be personal life. And when we say we want to be something, are we obsessed enough? Are we willing to be disciplined enough to do everything it takes to give us the best shot at getting that outcome?

And this is the same principles that we're putting in our software at MetaVolve, which is how do I identify people and identify the performance and effectiveness of people so that I can recognize and reward them so that I can create alignment to that one person who may be billing a Blue Cross insurance claim or somebody who's answering a patient phone call, but empower them to want to do the best job they can. And I think that that's the best shot we have in health care right now is to create capacity in teams, make sure that every touch that it takes to get claims paid is a good touch, right? And not a bad touch. And I think that that will give us the ability to claw back some of this margin.

Because I don't think we can bet on the insurance companies or the payers in general, including the government, to do anything. And I think the supply chain and labor costs are going to keep going up. So it's not a great position to be in as a provider of any health care services today. You know, you hear stories like my friend from church and he's a local dentist and he just refuses to take any insurance because of this exact thing that you're talking about. It's like, I'm not going to fool with it. It's not worth my trouble.

It's not worth my staff, my follow up, my whatever, the tiny margin. So he just does all cash or whatever the case is, but just consumer pay. And so when you are working with health care organizations talking about this, they're nodding their head going, yeah, we need help with this because it is a mess. What is your software do? What's like the major thing? What is your like, you know, tagline elevator pitch to go, oh, you know how this problem exists? we fix it because we boom. Yeah, yeah.

So really, I was laughing when you said that the dentist and the patient, because my dentist is the same way. I get shaken down before I'm even back in the dental chair. But before I answer that question, you know, one thing we got to remember, too, is if providers are now limiting the scope of who they take based on ability to pay, a lot of society is not going to fall in there. And so, you know, we have to also recognize that, you know, There's a lot of folks out there that don't have the money to pay for services, you know,

especially at 100%. And so that's a factor that has to be considered in how this is impacting society, too. But I think when I looks at Metavolve and the software we developed, it's actually the same software that I've really evolved over most of my career. We've been able to take it to a much further level here at MetaVold the last few years. But what it does is it really looks at every touch it takes to get claims paid and every touch by humans. And I think that, The reason we look at that is like any good supply chain, is it's kind of like I always say lean manufacturing. Like Henry Ford knew how many widgets it took, how many people it took, the sequence of events

it took to make the most efficient produced car at the best margin. But healthcare falls apart on that with its transactional systems. If you were to go to any healthcare provider today and say, how many touches and how many people does it take you to get a positive outcome, they'd say, I don't know. And then you'd go further and say, well, how many, what's it cost per touch? what's the cost of a bad touch? What's your margin per touch? You're paying $22 an hour now compared to $18 an hour, you know, two years ago.

So these are the themes and the principles that are required, in my opinion now, right, to be able to start solving some of these problems with health care revenue cycle. But in order to understand where humans are getting involved in most, first we've got to measure the touches. And I know that sounds kind of silly, but that is where we're seeing. What gets measured gets done. Right. did it? Yeah, did you get done? Did you, did the claim get resolved on the last time you touched it? Why did you have to touch it to begin with? Right. And so these are, these are principles that have been

around for a long time. I think healthcare is finally coming around and realizing that we don't start looking at lean business models and lean ways of delivering care and lean ways of collecting the money for that delivered care. We're not going to be independent anymore, right? We're going to be having to make choices that are not in the best interest of ourselves or the or the consumer. Well, I think it's really interesting if you look at it from the perspective of like from a marketing, you know, a marketing analytics will say have people come to your website and what's the least amount of clicks to get them to buy. And if you've got to click here and then here and then finally get to the cart and then click another time, forget about it.

what's the least amount of clicks to get to that sale? Well, on the flip side is what you're talking about. What are the least amount of clicks to get that claim paid? And if you are operationally more efficient, doesn't that mean that, yeah, the claim gets paid faster, of course, but also doesn't that free up time for your employees to be doing other things to become even more profitable? Bingo. You just nailed it. And it's that that theme of creating capacity. And then with that new capacity, that organization can decide what they want to do. they may not need the people or to your point they shift them to other more important areas of the revenue cycle to further improve efficiency so it's it's uh you know it's all i've done you know and it's many many years at this and i i do value that starting out in consulting working with

large health systems all over this country was really beneficial because i learned the intricacies of people process and technology and where things can go wrong quickly and and and how that gets done. You know, that's a that's a major, major point. And I think we could spend about a four-day seminar just on that one thing alone. But good thing you guys have solved it. And that's awesome. Let's kind of shift gears and go into like your passion project, your crusade. Tell us a little bit about my life link. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, when you when you look at addiction in this, this country and frankly in the world, right, it continues to plague this world, right? And it's not just the person afflicted with addiction. It could be a physical addiction like alcoholism or opiates

or it could be a behavioral addiction, you know, or it can be most likely an emotional addiction, right? I'm not good enough, right? And so when you think of the people around that individual that's afflicted with addiction, they all suffer to. And so, and I have firsthand experience. Again, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I like to try to put things in place that make it more efficient or have a better chance of better outcomes, right? Same reason I started Interpoint years ago and leaving Deloitte is the same reason I started my life link when I got out of treatment myself. So I'm in recovery coming up on six years.

And when I got out of treatment, I remember sitting there at the discharge process. And the nurse was like, hey, you know, great that you had a good stay. It looks like you learned a lot. I said, yeah, great, you know, can I connect with somebody back in San Diego who understands what staying in recovery is all about? Yeah, here's this guy. And he wrote a name down on a piece of paper and a first name, last initial on the phone number. And I said, is he, is he sober? She goes, I hope so. And then I said, well, what does he do for a levy? Like, like, I'm a business executive, an entrepreneur.

I mean, what's he do for fun? Could I surf with the guy? Does he have hobbies? Is he a dad? You know, is he a coach? Right. She's like, wow, those will all be great things to know. And I was like, with the money, I just spent, plus my insurance company, I'm like, how do you not know this? So what I started thinking about is the challenge of getting into recovery is the, is there's this like feeling when an addict is at their end that they're alone. I'm the only person in the world feeling is the way I do. And my problem was alcohol. And, you know, there's no one else like me, you know, and certainly not anybody who's like me who's got into recovery.

Well, here is, guess what? They're all over the place. They're in your zip code, right? The problem is we can't find them. So I can go on cars.com and match with my ideal car. I could go on a match.com and find my ideal life partner. I could do all of these things with tags, but where's the I want to get sober.com, right? And so that's what I did.

I found a platform company out there. And I created my LifeLink. And it's free for anybody to use. It's a global community now of thousands of people. And they're there every day, you know, tracking the things that they need to stay healthy, tracking the things that they do every day to be selfless and serve others. And that's really, really important. What I've learned in the last six years is it's not about, you know, what you do for yourself.

It's about what you do for others, expecting nothing in return. And so I've thrown myself into this crusade on my LifeLink. I do a lot of coaching for youth sports. I do a lot. Any opportunity I have to be a service to others is been a focus. of mind, hoping to inspire some of those individuals to also then be in service to others, which frankly, I think society needs more of right now. I think there's too much selfishness going on at all levels of our country. And we've got to get back to helping others.

You know, I think that's huge. And you think about, you know, whatever, you know, recovery from like what you just described, it's the aftercare. You know, the front end is let's take you through this process and now, you know, they high five you on the way out like, okay, cool, you know, hope we don't ever see you again. But then how do you make sure that that doesn't happen? And it reminds me, it's probably not a great analogy, but dudes like analogies. But have you ever heard of the phrase recidivism as it relates to prisoners? Well, maybe it kind of is a great analogy because it's like, sometimes people in recovery are

prisoners to their addiction. And so recidivism is like, what's the percentage of people that get out of prison and then go back in. Well, maybe they didn't have a good support system. So maybe this life link is the support system to help people continue through and maintain that recovery. And then that helps them not go back in. And so I think that is such a huge observation. You kind of like were the doctor kind of making the health care, you know, full circle there. You're the doctor that, you know, was gruff. But then when you had an issue, you saw the bedside care you got. You didn't like it. And you're like, wow, maybe I need to tweak my bedside care because I was the patient. I experienced it from the patient side. You left from the recovery center and going, I sure wish this existed. It doesn't. So let me just make it. So that is just spectacular.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's really, I mean, I mean, think about recovery. I mean, when we start to define addiction, it's really, you know, when obsession becomes normal, that's addiction. And so thought addiction drives everything. And we all have that, right? I mean, every single day.

I was coaching one of my high school track athletes yesterday. And she was going through all these things that she perceives as being a victim on. And I said, Elizabeth, you're, you're playing victim right now. Like, these are all things that have happened, right? How you choose to react to those things is on you. You don't control the decisions of others. You don't control. Yeah, they're bad, right?

I mean, life is a sequence of events. Sometimes we perceive those events as good. And sometimes we perceive those events as bad. And I believe in a higher power, I believe that everything happens in the order it was intended. And we have to accept that. And I'll tell you, when you start to believe in something greater in your side, there's a it's not taking the pressure off but it's knowing that somebody is putting you in situations that you can get through and and I think that that's also a big component to recovery is is knowing

you're not alone and and there is somebody out there working for you and there's a whole community of folks who get exactly you and where you're at today and want to help you you know and sometimes just knowing that someone else has been there done that and got the t-shirt it makes all the difference in the world because they can go oh yeah isn't it bad when or hey, you know, what helped me was when I looked at it through this lens or this perspective. I think that is just spectacular to be able to have that. And so what are the times or what is the feedback that you've received from people using your app going, you know, this has just been life changing because. Yeah, I mean, I've had everything from a 70 year old who got sober for the first time in his life, who eventually finished college, went on to grad school.

I've got the, you know, the heavy metal band guy whose wife saw me on the news one day and said, hey, you know, Jason, you should download this app, check it out. Here he is, almost four years sober, went back to school, got his occupational therapy degree, helping others every day. I mean, the story is, I mean, I wish, you know, the statistics are against us, right? You know, if 100 people tell you they're ready to get sober, you know, only 95 won't make a year, right? So we have to continue to realize that it is still grim out there. And so when we celebrate the wins, you know, we're hoping that the community sees those wins

and realizes that they could also be there. but I love it. I mean, I love just knowing that people, it's not just the people that are helping themselves. It's the family members. It's the friends. It's the memories that are now created because somebody stopped, you know, their addiction. And that is, I don't, it's exponential, right? I mean, if I think of my own personal experience, the memories I've created in almost over the last six years, especially with my sons and my wife, compared to prior, prior to, I mean, you can't compare those. You can't, not to mention the service work I've been able to do. do just because I'm sober. I wouldn't have this conversation with you right now, Mike,

if I hadn't have gotten in recovery, right? So when you start to think about that, it makes it so worth a while. I just wish there was a way to tell somebody who's in that state of craziness right now to just believe and have faith and you will see a future that will be extraordinary if you just choose to walk in that direction. And that's the hardest part is to try to get folks to see that because when you're in the fight and you're in the thick, it's really hard to see anything positive. But there is an ember out there. I always say there's an ember.

It's covered. It's smoldering. You can barely see it if you just blow a little bit of air on that. It's going to jumpstart your ability to transform your lives. And we're all here to help you. You know, a recurring thread through our conversation talking about healthcare industry, the app to help operational efficiencies, as well as your recovery app. it reminds me of the, you know, B2B, business to business or B2C, business to consumer,

but in reality, it's H to H, human to human. And so you can help humans throughout each of these processes through these platforms. You're talking about everyone wins. And I just love that crusade you're on on both of these aspects. So, Matt, if someone is interested in learning more about either or both, what's the best way they can do that and reach out and connect with you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for connecting with me, I think LinkedIn seems to be the easiest one.

out there. That seems to be what everyone goes with. Metavolve. If people are interested in MetaVold, they can go to Metavolve.com. And for My LifeLink, they can certainly go to My LifeLink app orcom or go onto Google Play or Apple and download the app themselves. You can be totally anonymous and still join the group. So lots of ways to reach out and connect with me or the companies. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Yeah, you as well, Mike. I really appreciate it. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes,

visit www. www. influential entrepreneursradio.com.