Episode 38: How to Avoid Costly Mistakes in Your Infusion Practice

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Transcript: How to Avoid Costly Mistakes in Your Infusion Practice

Dylan McCabe: We infuse podcast, episode number 38, welcome to the, we infuse podcast. My name is Dylan McCabe. And in every episode, we give you a seat at the table. As we talk with infusion center owners and practice leaders and industry experts so that we can give you the tips you need to remove the limits on your own practice. Now, in this episode, I’m going to talk with Kelly Cain. He’s had a lot of experience in the industry. He’s currently the CEO. COO and co owner of LiveWell Infusion and they, LiveWell Infusions, and they actually own AICs and manage AICs across the nation. He is a top notch leader. You’re going to, that’s going to come across during our interview, but he’s really going to dig into some of the. metrics you need to focus on in your business. He’s got a no nonsense approach and he’s also just going to give some real light bulb moments they’ve had while owning and managing infusion centers. You’re going to get a lot out of this. So let’s get into this interview with Kelly Kane from LiveWell Infusions. All right. As I mentioned, I have special guests on the show today, Kelly Kane, he’s the COO and owner of LiveWell. So Kelly, thanks for joining the show. Hey, thanks Dylan. Really appreciate the time. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I was looking forward to this because when I was an account executive with WeInfuse, you guys were one of the first clients that I got signed up in my new role. And, it was really cool just knowing what you were doing at the time and the amount of infusions you guys were doing multiple locations in your experience. So I, and fast forward to today, a lot has progressed since then. So like to give you a chance to just share with our listeners, who are you, what’s your background, stuff like that.

Kelly Kain: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I am a pharmacist by training. So graduated from university of Montana in 2009, kicked around a variety of different, tried to try my hand at a few different things, long term care, government contracting, retail, compounding, settled on compounding for awhile. And I was at a company that we were expanding and right before we met you, Dylan, we had gone into specialty pharmacy and grown that out and done accreditations, done everything we could. as an independent pharmacy to put ourself on the map and quite frankly got frustrated that PBMs were still taking our orders. So our sales team was cranking, we were getting good orders, we did everything everybody asked. We had ACHC, we had URAC, we had everything, and we’re still getting our orders diverted to Optum and Breova. So we decided that we needed to go about this a different way. And to us, the logical answer was, let’s go around the PBMs on this area. We’re buying bills, not controlled by them. And let’s start an infusion division. And we knew of people on the East coast that had done it. people know the big names in the game on the East coast. So we knew it was possible, but we literally started from scratch. And this was probably about six months before we met you guys that we infuse. Really just kicking the tires on what’s the best way to do this. What’s most efficient. How can we scale this? but it’s truly from, ground zero. so it’s fun to watch it grow and, to keep evolving, keep getting better at it.

Dylan McCabe: Yeah, that’s awesome. And you have a military experience as well, if I remember correctly.

Kelly Kain: Yeah. Yeah. Good memory. So, I, my dad was in the air force for 25 years. so moved all over. My wife has been in the air force reserve for 17 years now, and I’ve been in the army reserve for a little over eight years now, so we stay busy on our weekends. it’s good. We both enjoy it. Glad to serve the country, and get a difference, get a different little look at life. It was funny. The, I was a pharmacist already, obviously, and had been for a while. I was older when I joined the military. I was 20 about 29 at the time. So going to basic training with 17 year olds and all the recruiters are like, you can be a pharmacist in the army and it’s like, we’ll make you captain and it’s easy. You don’t have to do any of this stuff. And to me, it was just the challenge of doing something new. doing a different occupation. at the time I’m like, I get enough pharmacy during my week and I’m plenty busy doing that. I need something different. That’s going to challenge me. So I entered the reserves as a, went to basic training and then officer school and then engineer school, for six months and was a engineer platoon leader for a while. And then recently I’ve kicked over to civil affairs, which is a little more specialized, but really enjoy it. miss my kids when I’m gone, but it’s, worth it. My wife and I are on the same page with that one.

Dylan McCabe: It’s good stuff. Thank you for your service. Really appreciate that. I could, I’m, not going to even go off on how much I appreciate the military and people who serve, but, really do appreciate your service. And I think it’s cool how the experience you’ve had in the military. And even now I know bridges over into leadership and organizational, leadership and management skills that help your business thrive. So tell us about LiveWell. you’re an owner and COO at LiveWell. So what does LiveWell do?

Kelly Kain: Yeah, so we started live well early 2020 right around February, right before COVID it so awesome time to start a new business. Awesome time to see what you’re really made of as you’ve got everything geared up ready to go and the nation goes on lockdown. So our vision for live well, my, my fellow owners and I, who we were at a lot of the same companies together. we had observed the changing landscapes of infusion. AICs are popping up. AICs have a great role for alternative sites of care. and our big piece of our puzzle too, we do those, but we also saw where the larger groups have now realized through a good marketing by the good management companies, that there’s revenue to be had, for your patients. If you’re a large group, you’re a large room, rheumatologist, you’re a large gastro, you’re a large neuro group. The odds of them offloading all their patients to use pretty low. they understand there’s a value to the patients. They understand there’s a revenue source that could be generated. So as we grew and our vision was. We can’t be one size fit all. We need to be a hybrid and we need to be adaptable to the market. And certain practices are going to be better for one thing and some are better for the other. So when we approached live well, that was exactly it. We don’t want to have a split between what we call MSAs managed service, agreement companies. and AICs that are owned by us. and that’s the route we’ve gone. there’s certainly a role for pharmacy in there. people that are in this industry know products like IG, and certain other biologics do pay better and are better served on the home infusion front. So that’s our third leg that we are just about opening is a home infusion component that will compliment those first two. But yeah, that’s, how we approach it. We, were in the biologic game. We’re not antibiotic people. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we’re, this is the business that we’re in is the biologics and good timing for everybody with better therapies coming out across a variety of these disease states. So yeah, that’s the live wells. That’s the live wells. overarching vision.

Dylan McCabe: Okay. So you guys have got AICs that you own, and you’ve also got practices that you help manage. Correct. So what, how, let’s clear the fog on that for, people listening to this, that maybe it’s a provider that owns an infusion practice or rheumatologist, or maybe even a group, and maybe they’ve had conversations over the last year or two years thinking, maybe we need an MSA. Maybe we need somebody to come alongside and help, if we’re to be honest, we’re. We’re really strong in the clinical side, but it seems like the business side, our limits are in our business acumen and that’s holding us back a little bit. what would you say? What’s the one thing that you would say if, this is an area of struggle, you may want to consider a conversation with us.

Kelly Kain: Sure. Yeah. I’ll give you two. The two that jump out to me is anyone that’s been in a busy doctor’s offices. They know the strain that’s placed on an MA. An MA is expected to run around all day, take care of the patients, take care of the doctor, take care of this, take care of that. The idea that you’re going to ask and trust that MA in the middle of all that to go authorize a potentially 600, 500, 000 infusion a year, and do it successfully and do it right and not ever mess up. I think that’s a big ask. And I think that’s a, likely fail point. I think that’s too much to ask of MAs in general. if you have someone that’s devoted to just doing authorizations and you’re good at it, awesome. that’s great. But in general, most offices don’t have a devoted person that can sit there and do the painstaking work it takes to authorize an infusion that costs that much money down to the detail where you’re confident you’re going to get paid. So that’s number one. Number two is, do you have the financial carry as a provider or a group? To front the money for these drugs where versus pharmacy, you know pharmacy you hit your submit claim button It shoots off to your clearing house and you’re getting paid. you get that confirmation, that warm blanket on you. You don’t get that in the buying bill world. It’s all what you’re doing on the phone and your level of detail and the person you’re talking to the other side. So that’s really the two things. Does your staff have the time to do this successfully? And then do you have. the confidence in them to carry that financially for, you’re looking 20, 20 Okravis, you got a big carry on your hand. So those are the two things we approach doctors and say, Hey, this is where we think we’d fit in. and started at that conversation point.

Dylan McCabe: it’s interesting. You say that getting into the MA thing, it’s such a key, the people component of your business, it’s so critical to have the right people in the right seats. And and I think right seats that they’re in a role that they get they want and they’ve got the capacity to do it And that’s where I think a lot of practice falls short is there They’re putting people in a place where they’re they don’t have the capacity and then that creates problems. It creates stress. It creates poor decisions and so on And then you talk about the other thing which is cash I love entrepreneurship and love talking with business owners and I would think if you were to ask most Providers or, business owners, what’s the key financial metric? They’re probably going to say revenue or something about gross profit, or even net profit, but really it’s cash, right? You, can go really far in revenue, but if the cash isn’t there. You can end up filing for bankruptcy. So I think it’s conversations like that, that you guys can get people in and pull them into tough conversations and needed conversations about that is just critical. So that’s awesome. I think it’s great what you guys are doing. So what would you say is a big thing you’ve learned, about running an infusion center and AIC as it pertains to that cash component, what’s one key takeaway that you guys have learned so far?

Kelly Kain: Oh man. Yeah. You’re speaking my alley. This is. When we were doing consulting, we did that kind of in the gap there in 2019. I did a lot of consulting and a lot of startups, even really big companies too, but it all hovers around what I would consider the three big things for AICs. And this will answer your question is yes, you guys want a nice infusion center. And of course we’re going to take care of patients. That’s always the goal is to take care of patients. But if you’re looking from a business perspective, you need three things. Did you spend the time, money, and effort on contracting credentialing to do it right? Cause all this is great, but if the payers don’t recognize it or you’re underwater, you’re doing a lot of work for, nothing. So that’s one. And I think that’s a big challenge for a lot of people. Number two, do you have a sales strategy to grow this? This is not a business where you can dabble and get five, 10 patients be happy and be comfortable, and you’re going to pay your bills and your overhead that way. It’s just not going to happen. If you’re, either in this or out of this, in my opinion, unless this is just a side gig, that’s you’re playing around with, but a lot of companies we talked to didn’t have a sales strategy. and it differs from. I know home infusion pharmacies, they’re great at going to hospitals and are great at going to this, dispatch or this discharge planners, to get the vancos, to get the depots, but that’s not this world. You’re not getting Remicade. You’re not getting Okravish. You’re not getting to Pez’s from the ER and from the hospital, from the discharge. That’s your sales seems way out misaligned at that point. So do you have a plan and are you willing to commit money to that plan for a sales training? And then three operational, like to your cashflow question. Who’s doing your intake? How good are they at that? Do you understand copay assistance? How is your revenue cycle look? What’s your plan to keep your DSO down? those are all things that you just can’t hope to get into. You need to have a plan before you start. Otherwise, you’re just throwing money in the wind here.

Dylan McCabe: That’s right. And the dollars are too high to make a costly mistake. There’s plenty of other business models where you can make mistakes and, Give people their money back and do all kinds of things. you can’t do that in this.

Kelly Kain: You’re at the big boy table in Vegas. You’re playing. and quite frankly, we’ve had MSAs in the past. So doctors that they were burned by quite frankly, it can be just a couple of patients, right? Because if you’re billing cycle, let’s say their billing cycle is 90 days, which I’d say is not very good. I, you probably have three infusions during that period. So you have three that are unpaid before you even realize they’re unpaid. And how many times did that occur? so the ability to dig a hole very quickly is a challenge in this industry, if you don’t know what you’re doing. So that’s where I caution, even the people I consulted with, like the most important thing is take care of your money, tighten up this off. If it takes more time, so be it because you will save money long term and you’ll be much happier to sleep better. Because it’s all about cash.

Dylan McCabe: So what’s, your best advice for that? If, people have to watch the cash and people have to have, a system in place where they’re protecting themselves from getting in over their skis and stuff like that, what’s one major piece of advice you would give?

Kelly Kain: So twofold, I’ll probably go reverse order here. And this pertains to doctors as well as AICs and the billers you hire, because you can go online and Google medical billers and there’s a lot of good companies. And maybe in the house, you have a really good person that does it, but are they familiar with biologics and the burden that is, this is not coding. This is not an E and M where you lose a hundred dollars if you plugged it in wrong, but do you have the familiarity with buy and bill biologics to chase these claims and make them pay you? Because if you did your off, right, they’re going to pay you. That’s the reality. You have them. If you have it done right, they will. But I’ve seen billers that this just isn’t their thing. And they’re so used to, Hey, we got to crank out X number of, claims today that they put the same priority weight on a 30 Checkup visit as they would a 30, 000 infusion and that’s way offline You know you have to zoom back out and say this one claim Is worth a hundred to a thousand fold times at enm visit. So that’s a big thing I always think billing is very important and who you partner with or if you do it in house like how do you guide them in that’s always an important discussion And I always fall back intake is You know That is, you can’t start this business without that sure. You can do Medicare and stops. That’s easy. But when you start getting into commercial claims with prior offs, like you need somebody that ideally has done this before. You can’t take someone off the street and say, Hey, here, go do this for us and expect it to be successful. It’s just not going to happen.

Dylan McCabe: That’s a good point. And I, that’s one of the things I love about we infuse the software platform is it dramatically simplifies all that, you’re thinking for a bill or for somebody has to pay attention to a lot of different You have very clear red or green lights based on where things are at. You don’t have to wonder, Oh, wait, where’s that in the process? Where is this in the process? It’s all in one spot. So I’m not going to camp out.

Kelly Kain: You alluded to it earlier and I’ll, pump, you guys up. I’ll give you, so for we infused, so we adopted it early, in 2015 ish, if my memory’s anywhere near right. What a lot of people were doing, and we infuse knew this because they built it, they were jimmy rigging other systems to make it work. So whether you were taking a platform, I won’t say the name built for home infusion and trying to manipulate that to be a infusion center software. Not so good. Didn’t work. Were you trying to take an E. M. R. That exists free on the market and manipulate that? Not so good. So what we infused it, is it really for inventory multiple backup for multiple sites, especially inventory management, authorization management, patient management. It put that all on one platform for us so that we were able to scale and we were able to move across state lines and have very good success with it.

Dylan McCabe: It’s good stuff. Yep. That’s why it’s, easy to be passionate about it, even as a podcast host, because I know how much it can help people. Anytime you simplify a system, I really feel like one of the, one of the top five leadership qualities needed to lead well is to simplify. You’re constantly trying to reduce complexity. So that’s, good stuff. So what would you say, having multiple AICs and you have a lot of experience with this and as, chief operating officer, you’re really trying to systematize, streamline, you’re trying to have a really good grip on, on a well oiled machine, so that people can be served well, so that patients can be served well. what’s one of the biggest challenges you guys have come across, maybe even a true story where things just went haywire. And then we’ll get into what you learned from that.

Kelly Kain: Yeah. The one that jumps out to me, and I am a big advocate of MSAs. I think it’s great to partner. I, think a patient that can be served in their prescribing office. I think that’s awesome. If they’re used to that doctor, they’re comfortable with the staff that most likely is probably the best place. Now they’re lacking the ability to do that, which is good for us. But, if you had to pick one spot for the patient to be, I’d say you want them in the neurology office. You want them in the gastro office, but the challenge on the MSA side. And what I always tell my staff is. If they were finally tuned at this, they wouldn’t need us in our expectation that this is as important to them as it is to us is a assumption we need to get rid of because to us, this Remicade, this Antivio, this Zolaire is the most important thing happening in that moment. And for that day, but the reality is this practice is seeing a hundred patients that day and their ma’s are doing this and that, and they’re doing labs, they’re doing vitals, they’re doing everything that just because it’s super important to us, doesn’t mean it’s super important to them. Which means that we need to step up and we need to create a process where we take the burden off them as much as possible. So when we go into these, I go and tell my team, Hey, expect the worst expected. There’s no organization and that we are going to help them streamline all of this and make this as easy as possible. Not only on the doctor that signed us up, but the ma take that lift off them, take it off the office manager. So I think if you can like readjust your mindset about this, if they were functioning perfectly, they don’t need us. Like that’s the reality. If they’re really good at this and there’s a lot of rheumatology and oncology practices that are very good at this, you’re not going to sign them up. This is what they do. They’ve been doing this for years, but the offices that haven’t, or have that hesitation. Go in expecting that you need to help them simplify their process and streamline this to make their life easier. And then we have a good relationship. It’s a partnership at that point. It’s not a contract. It’s not a us and them. We are in partnership with them to serve their patients and everyone wins.

Dylan McCabe: So when you say they, if, they were really good at this, they wouldn’t need us, what do you mean by good at this? Like what’s the scenario? Just if you could think of one practice where you came in and it was, It was a super bumpy process with a lot of things delays mistakes that shouldn’t have been made Paint a picture of because some people may think some people, providers listening this may think I think we’re pretty good at this But i’m not sure, you know What how do you rate somebody on a scale of one to ten or How do you go in and assess just in a real life way? What’s a almost like a case study of a situation where you guys looked in and saw wow, they really need some help You Let’s say the easy

Kelly Kain: thing, and this is, the good, part of biologics is it’s your, it’s chronic, right? So it’s every month, it’s every two weeks for Zoeller, it’s, this or that. Are your patients being seen on time? And that’s a very easy thing to track, right? And I’m not asking them to dig into KPIs and dig into metrics. I just want to know, did your patient receive the number of infusions that they’re supposed to during the course of the year? And normally the answer is no. And then we go into, okay, why is the answer? No, if they were supposed to get 12 infusions and they got 10 this year, what is, what’s the holdup here? And I can tell you from experience, typically it’s an authorization holdup. It’s a scheduling holdup. It’s a lack of communication with the patient holdup, but there’s something in that process where. Not only you are missing out on doing another two infusions, your patient’s missing their dose. Now they’re behind on schedule. And now they’re, disease states kicking back into play. So if I sat down with someone and that was the only thing we looked at is did your patients receive the number of doses they’re supposed to within a, I’ll give them a window. Normally the answer is no. And then from there, it’s a pretty easy discussion on why it happened. and again, it’s, we have the time to get these authorizations done. We have, we infuse, we have some tools on our hands. that allow us to track this so that when that off expires, we already know we’re good. The next one’s covered. We got you next month. We’ll see you. There’s no, Oh man, we’re in a real pinch here. It’s three months later and they haven’t had it. That doesn’t happen. So that’s the easiest answer to that question. I think.

Dylan McCabe: Okay. So what’s a key takeaway from that? if you could tell somebody, listen to this, that’s an owner and infusion center provider, and you were going to ask them that, are they getting the number of doses in a year or whatever? And they may think, well, yeah, we have a scheduling challenge. You’re like, no, you got to know. So what’s the number one key takeaway from that? I’ve done

Kelly Kain: this. I’ve opened or helped open 60 or 70 of these. Now I’ve managed as many as that. You shouldn’t hear my answer. You shouldn’t have that problem. That’s the reality. Like there is no excuse to me why you can’t get someone in 12 out of 12 times or six out of six times. If you’ve seen the other side of this, I’ve seen when it goes bad and I’ve seen when it goes good. If you do it right, there is no excuse. And I think that would be where I’d start. And it very polite, like there should never be a time where your patient misses a dose because of something you did. That’s just not unacceptable to me. So maybe harsh, but I think that, I think they know that. And we’re all, doctors are too, they’re in this for patient care. They want everyone to be better. They don’t want the patient to be two months behind. But they have a big burden to carry at the practice. You have a big burden to carry at the AIC. You have x number of lives you’re taking care of. You shouldn’t be missing doses like that’s the blunt truth to anybody that wants to do this

Dylan McCabe: You know what though? I think to thrive in a practice And in business you really need that healthy accountability from other business owners. You need to be able to have somebody coming in saying hey I think you’re doing well over here, but I think this area really needs some improvement You need somebody that you can bounce ideas off of somebody you can test your own assumptions off of And that’s kind of part of what you bring to the table after working in all the A. I. C. S. That you have after being a chief operating officer, and a part owner in a business and infusion business, you can come in and you can say, Hey, here’s the bar you were thinking it might be over here. You got a buddy across town over here. You got another provider in another state over here. They all think the bars in different places. Here’s the bar. We know this. and I think that’s really healthy to have kind of a healthy punch in the chest. Say, Hey, here’s what we need to be doing. so

Kelly Kain: that’s it. That’s it. And you alluded to it. I tell my team and my managers like a first off, remove the emotion from it. I don’t, there’s no, this is a, conversation about efficiency. It’s not about emotion. It’s not about this reason or that reason, but to your points, and this is, some of the army stuff. I know. These big companies pay people and send them leadership school. I’ve, had better leadership training than just by enlisting in the army and going to officer school and doing this. And what I get, what I gathered out of that in my time in services, we do a lot of 360 feedback. So not only is it important what your boss thinks of you, it’s very important what your peers think of you. And then also the people that you manage, what they think of you. And are you able to have that frank discussion, good and bad with everybody? I’m not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings. same goes to the doctor, but you should be able to have a non emotional discussion about how to improve something. And I think that’s very important for anybody starting a new business out there.

Dylan McCabe: That’s so good. Yep. Data driven discussions. if you’ve got, if you have, your hand on the pulse of your business, the business side of the practice, then you can make wise decisions. And avoid costly mistakes as well. So that’s really good stuff. So let’s, share another story with, what you guys have been doing. What was a pivot point where you realized, you know what, we’ve made a decision to incorporate this practice, or this value, or this Part of our that’s essential to what we do every single day in our AICs and also as an MSA What’s a light bulb moment you guys had that really improved your path to growth and to success

Kelly Kain: I’ll give you a good example. This is from a few years ago We were rocking and rolling the AICs. We had, more over a dozen open and we’d gotten to that point where it became very data driven and this number of patients, this number of treatments, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. And the bottom line showed it, we were doing very well, but. We also had to remember the important part of this when we went into it was to take better care of patients. So when the new ALS drug came out, and this is a number of years ago, radicaba, it’s a challenging deal for an AIC. So you’re talking, if I believe it’s the first two weeks, they have to come in literally every day. I don’t know a lot of AICs that are open seven days a week. I don’t know a lot of nurses that want to work seven days a week. The medication, if you have ALS, the odds are you are a probably on Medicare disability or you’re on Medicaid because how financially challenging that disease state is. and we made the decision that we were going to take every single radicapa patient that came our way. And that really reinforced our employees that It’s not all about the money. It’s not all about how fast can you get this authorized? Like these are true patients that most of them passed away. I’m sure all of them have passed away by now. unfortunately, but this is a very people driven world too. And we can’t just look at the numbers. You need to zoom back out and realize why did you start this business to start with? And that one for me, for all our employees, it was like very impactful. We probably, I’m sure we lost money long term and it’s fine. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was totally worth it for us as a company and as a. Team to take that challenge on,

Dylan McCabe: that’s good. I think, that’s what I mean, that’s what causes pretty much everybody to get into this type of practices. It really is a people centered practice. It’s a people centered approach to what you do every day you’re dealing with people with chronic diseases and You’re helping them. You’re a big part of their lives And that’s what it was so impressive to me, you know coming into the world of infusion from the outside and I you know realizing that a lot of these people spend hours In, an a IC once a month or once every two weeks or whatever, they become like family. And that comes through in a lot of the podcast interviews. We do that. A lot of the people we have on that, you can tell that’s their heartbeat. They, are all in on the patients. we had one podcast interview where, we, the, person I interviewed even talked about giving one of her kidneys to her patients. Wow. We’re talking about being all in to change people’s lives.

Kelly Kain: Yeah.

Dylan McCabe: So knowing that, that’s. Critical. That’s the core. That’s got to be the hardest. It’s all about the people at the same time. If you don’t get the business stuff really rain tight, you can’t serve the people. You can’t really focus on the people. And so it’s both, it’s, got to be both. So, I just think

Kelly Kain: that’s, critical. You back at the, BICs and we’ve had them, obviously a lot of places and it’s not always possible for. Our intake team, the one that really deals with these people daily and hourly, they’re spending a lot of hours with these people. It’s not always possible for them to stop by wave, say hi, but I know for each and every one of them to a person, they’d say the ability for when someone is in the office just to come by now, this is pre COVID come by wave, say, hi, say, Hey, nice to meet you. I’m glad we got this all figured out. Each of them would say, To a person that’s very, important. And one of the best parts of working at NAIC is the ability to see this thing all the way through. And at the end of the day, the patient’s getting the infusion, everybody’s happy. And we move on. Like you said, we do it again.

Dylan McCabe: That’s good stuff. So knowing what you’ve been through so far and where you guys are at with live well, what are you excited about? As far as the next three to five years in infusion, knowing what’s, headed our way, with your experience? What are you looking forward to?

Kelly Kain: So we joke, or I don’t know, it seemed a joke. And AICs, I’ll exclude MSAs to some degree. There’s a little more complexity there. AICs remind me of 2015 2016. I remember going to the Assembly of Specialty Pharmacy Conference in Vegas, and there’s this big deal. Everybody’s there. all the specialty pharmacies are there. It’s a real showcase of who has money and who doesn’t. But it was like the buzzword of the day. Like, man, like this, was a conference for pharmacy, but everybody, all they could talk about was specialty pharmacy, And you left there and we’d been doing it for awhile. And the two takeaways was, you’re a couple of years behind and do you really understand what that means? and I feel that way about AICs. I get calls all the time. We’ve stopped doing consulting. We did it for a while, but I want to get in this industry. And so the first, it’s a heart to heart of like, how much are you really willing to get into this? I think it’s great. The more sites, the better there’s plenty of business. There’s a hundred plus billion dollar industry. So I’ve never worried about competitors, but the part that excites me is, are you able to see the challenges of the marketplace? Are you able to evolve? Are you able to create hybrid models like MSAs to make this work? Are you willing to put a pharmacy in to really complete the loop? Like that whole thought process of like, I’m going to put two AICs down. I’ll tell you right now, like that would not satisfy me as a person intellectually, or as a business person, I want the challenge of, we want to grow this and we want to be the best at it. Now, how do we do that? And it’s not one size fit all. It’s not, Hey, do this over and over again. There’s some things that have to change by state, by region, by market. That part I love. I love the adaptability and I love where this industry is going, where. Everyone’s aware that this is a very critical piece of our infrastructure. now how do you do it the best? And that’s what I like. That efficiency is what I like.

Dylan McCabe: That’s so good. Yep. You focus on solutions and helping, people do better, helping practices get better. That is exciting. And there’s, a positive, really positive motivation there. So Kelly, I’m sure there’s going to be some people listen to this and think, I’d really like to tap into Kelly’s knowledge a little bit more. How, can people get in touch with you and learn more about LiveWell?

Kelly Kain: Yeah, no, that’s, great. I’ll shout out to, Reese and Reese is like the network king of infusion. So he normally puts me in contact with people, but please everyone, if you hear this and you want to talk, like, Love meet me, meeting new people in the industry. Love networking, but Kelly, K-E-L-L-Y at LiveWell, L-I-V-W-E-L-L, infusions with an S. We like to do more than one.com. kelly@livewellinfusions.com. Reach out, love to network, love to meet people across the country. So, we’re passionate about this and we like meeting fellow people that are that way too.

Dylan McCabe: Good stuff. And of course, if you’re driving somewhere and listen to this, just Google live well infusions. And of course you can listen to this podcast again, and Kelly gives out his email at the very end. So Kelly, thank you so much for being on the show, man. It’s a pleasure. Hey, really appreciate you having me. Thank you for, letting us on. That was awesome. All right. Great interview with Kelly. I really like what he, dove into with systems, especially, are you seeing your patients on time? Are they getting, seen on time and are they getting all the treatments that they should get in a given year? And if not, there’s actually probably multiple things going on. I really like his no nonsense approach, his attention to detail, and at the same time the, passion to make the patient first. So if you want to learn more about Kelly, you can just google Live Well Infusions. And I like that he also gave out his personal email. And if you haven’t done so already, you need to do yourself a favor and schedule a call with one of the WeInfuse account executives and see what the software platform can do with you. It is the only tailor made solution built by Infusion Center operators and managers for Infusion Center operators and managers. You will be blown away. I guarantee it. All right, guys, this is Dylan McCabe with the We Infuse podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode.

Guest Speaker: Kelly Kain received his Doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of Montana, and is now the COO & Founder of LivWell Infusions and Managing Partner at Alliance Infusions. LivWell was founded to simplify the infusion suite process and referral network to support office-based infusion therapy.