Consulting Magazine - February 2018

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 Ave-
lead, an Atlanta-based firm that helps im-
plement 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 hum-
ble beginnings before it caught fire in 2017.
“Our first few clients were based off of re-
lationships 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 enhanc-
ing 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-im-plementation 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 gen-
eral implementation use, but we’ve found
that our clients are interested in managing
revenue neutrality through implementa-
tions,” 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 fo-
cused project plans, and provide the nec-
essary tools to execute. “The company has
developed proprietary tools to put checks
and balances in place, ensuring a high qual-
ity, 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. “Health-
care 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 sys-
tems kept all of that separate but now that’s
all integrated and clinically driven.”