Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Chris Sullens, CEO of CentralReach (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Is your core value through the EMR?

Chris Sullens: Yes. 

Sramana Mitra: There are general medical EMRs out there. I’m sure you are competing against those. Are there also specialized mental health EMRs?

Chris Sullens: There are but we are positioned in a unique way in that we are a vertically focused EMR. The providers that use our EMRs all fall within the ABA services to autistic individuals. We are focused on that area. 

Sramana Mitra: So you are specifically focused on autistic individuals? 

Chris Sullens: Yes, the primary clients of our customers are families and children who are on the spectrum. However, when it comes to our assistive technology, which is an acquisition that we just completed at the beginning of this year, the services and the areas it is used for can also serve beyond autistic individuals to the more neuro-diverse population.

Sramana Mitra: What is the difference between a generic EMR versus an autism-focused EMR? What are some of the salient differences or workflow differences? Where do you add value?

Chris Sullens: That is a great question and it certainly is different. To be honest, when we look at our competitive set, we rarely run across a generic EMR that competes effectively against us because there are unique workflows.

First and foremost, the actual workflow of ABA is unique to this industry. It is detailed and rigorous in terms of the amount of data that gets collected, the way the data gets analyzed, the way the data gets charted, and the way that programs are built.

When you think of care for autistic individuals, every individual is unique in their needs and has a unique assessment. It is individualized medicine, if you will. As a result, our platform needs to be able to be flexible enough to allow providers to build care plans, programs, and curricula that address the needs of each of these individuals and progress them along with their care plan in a unique way.

We also need to do this at scale. I would say that is first and foremost. The way that the services get provided predominantly gets done in a home setting. Providers come out to the home to provide care. That is increasing. That also adds, to some degree, a bit of home healthcare. It involves scheduling and routing, which are critical in terms of creating capacity and providing the right services to the right individual. That gets married into the platform as well. We provide unique things like clinical curricula. It can support the services that are being provided by our providers. That is not something that a generic EMR would do.

Just to give you a sense, the quarterback of care in an autistic setting is what they call board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA). We employ over 35 BCBA on staff and they serve in sales, product development, support, research directors, and curricula development. As a result, they allow us to tailor the platform to the unique workflows that are needed in this space. 

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Chris Sullens, CEO of CentralReach
1 2 3 4 5