So now that you know where the name came from, it’s time to answer the second most frequently asked question. “Why dentists, orthodontists and other small healthcare providers? Why not everyone?” Ok, yes that is technically two questions, but they get asked together almost always.
The simple answer is this: You stick to what you know. In my case, I know the healthcare market very well. Even before I started my career in IT services, I was already knee deep in healthcare. In 1992, I was a senior in high school by day, college student by night. Three nights a week I would head to the Brookley campus of the University of South Alabama where I took my basic emergency medical technician course. Very few people knew of my dual attendance, not even my primary EMS instructor.
Growing up in the late 70’s and early 80’s one of my favorite television shows had been “Emergency.” For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be a paramedic just like Johnny and Roy. So I jumped at the chance to get started on my EMS career a semester earlier than expected. From 1992 until mid-2000 I worked for various public safety organizations throughout the southeast, some public some private. As I grew older, I began to realize that while I loved what I did, I couldn’t lead the life I wanted working in a field where the top pay hovered somewhere around twelve dollars an hour.
So began my journey into the world of IT services. In July of 2002, I opened what would become The ASI Group. An IT company that specialized in helping healthcare providers make the transition to digital X-Rays and electronic medical records. By 2010 we had grown to almost ten employees and had offices in Mobile, Birmingham and Destin, FL and were servicing the IT needs of nearly two hundred healthcare clients. In late 2010, in what can be described only as a bout of temporary insanity, ASI and its client base were absorbed by a Fortune 500 healthcare distributor.
In 2013, PointClear Networks came into existence, and again a majority of its clients were healthcare providers. So it only makes sense that as I start a new company with a new mission, that I continue to focus on the industry that I know so thoroughly.
But there’s more to the story than that. I feel particularly compelled to help small practitioners because I see the rise of corporate medicine every day. Sizeable dental management organizations are purchasing solo practices at an alarming rate. Chains with hundreds of locations nationally are rapidly replacing the family-owned practices that have been a mainstay in the industry since its inception. It’s happening in other parts of healthcare as well, and it saddens me to think that in the future we may reach a point where what’s best for the patient comes second to what’s best for the shareholder.
So I choose to fight the fight in the arena where I feel I can do the most good.
