Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: John Damgaard, CEO of MatrixCare (Part 1)

Senior populations in all parts of America are ballooning. The population of unemployed younger people will also balloon as automation ravages American society. Can these two trends converge to find a happy middle ground with the mission of creating a compassionate, humane society?

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to MatrixCare as well as yourself.

John Damgaard: My name is John Damgaard. I’m the President and CEO of MatrixCare. MatrixCare is focused on the spectrum of US healthcare known as long-term post-acute care, which is a traditional name used to describe what we do. I often question whether it’s the best term to describe what we do. We’re in the business of pre-acute care primarily for the senior population ensuring their ongoing health and wellness as they move across their lives and as they move across the spectrum of care.

MatrixCare provides electronic medical records to manage resident or patient stays in these various care settings. We also provide the overarching longitudinal record which creates the full view of a patient or a resident’s progression across care setting boundaries. As they transition from home, maybe they have an episode of falling. They end up in a hospital with a broken hip. They’re then transitioned back to a skilled nursing facility for rehab stay. Maybe they go back home. Four to five years later, it’s time for some assistance with the activities of daily living.

Then we go to a senior living setting and those kinds of natural transitions occur for our customers’ customers. We provide the digital backbone to manage care and wellness across the long-term post-acute care here in the US. We are focused on the US. We are focused on the US because most folks are aware of the demographic challenges with that population in the US.

Sramana Mitra: You have the full care facilities?

John Damgaard: We provide the systems to operate and run patient care across the spectrum of care – clinical, financial, operational, systems – to manage everything from the intake through their care.

Sramana Mitra: This is a business that has been around forever. What trends do you see that are new and interesting from a technology point of view. Our work is all technology. We don’t really do any work with physical facilities. This is a technology platform.

John Damgaard: Let me just be very clear. We are a technology platform. We provide the technology for caregivers. One of the overarching problems is the exploding population. We’re going from 45 million seniors to, very soon, 110 million. That’s known as the baby boomer wave. Today, we can’t afford to provide the care that we provide to seniors.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: John Damgaard, CEO of MatrixCare
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