Please see below for the third installment of our interview series, A View From the Top. This series features interviews with C-suite leadership of private equity-backed portfolio companies. This installment features Andy Blankemeyer, CEO of Beacon Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine. The previous installment, featuring Scotte Hudsmith of Smile Doctors, is available here. To recommend a leader for a future interview, email Holly Buckley at hbuckley@mcguirewoods.com.
As a reminder, our 17th annual Healthcare and Life Sciences Private Equity and Finance Conference is February 19 and 20 in Chicago. The save the date is available here. Please contact us for more information or to indicate an interest in participating on a panel.
Q: What do you believe is the most significant current challenge to growing your business and what will be necessary to overcome it?
Andy Blankemeyer: The orthopedics space backed by private equity is in its infancy. We were one of the first major orthopedic platforms in partnership with Revelstoke Capital Partners.
I think the biggest challenge to growing our business is education, more specifically, education for the physicians and administrative leadership of potential partner orthopedic groups, regionally and nationally, to better understand the model we’re developing and how it differs from previous consolidation efforts back in the 1990s.
Q: What plans do you have to further grow your business and what will be necessary to achieve this growth?
AB: We want to become a regional and potentially national orthopedic management services organization. We want to take our skill sets and knowledge, as well as the skill sets and knowledge of other partner groups that we consolidate with, to help drive our three key differentiators: quality, access and value. We want to provide high-quality orthopedic care that is readily available to any patient, such as by offering extended and weekend hours, for a cost-effective rate.
That’s our ultimate goal. We believe there are a lot of other independent and current hospital-employed doctors in our region and around the country who are looking for the administrative support necessary to maintain their independence and clinical autonomy.
Q: What is your best tip for recruiting physician talent?
AB: It’s all about putting the physician in the driver’s seat. We need to have a physician-led and -driven consolidation effort to make this work. We must allow physicians to run their clinical practices the way they have run them for years, without the interference of overreaching administration like myself. They need to be motivated, engaged and incentivized to run an efficient and busy practice.
Our recruitment strategy is to give physicians the platform required to do just that and have all the back-office, administrative and contracting work done for them. This will allow these physicians to focus on the patient and run the effective clinical practice they want rather than being told what to do by either a hospital partner or market forces that are out of their control.
Q: What characteristics do you look for in administrative leaders within your organization?
AB: Orthopedics is a very fast-paced environment. It’s constantly changing. When we’re looking at administrative leaders, we are looking for people who understand that what they are doing today might not be what they are doing tomorrow. They need that flexible and driven mindset that allows them to pick up new initiatives and push them toward implementation. We need leaders who are able to act quickly and enact positive change for the organization.
Q: What do you think is the key to retaining your talent?
AB: It’s all about empowerment — empowering them to lead the organization to the best of their ability following a well-communicated, companywide strategic roadmap.
About Andy Blankemeyer
Andy Blankemeyer is the chief executive officer of Beacon Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine. Prior to becoming CEO in 2016, he served in multiple roles for the organization, including chief operating officer for seven years. In 2019, Blankemeyer became the CEO of a new orthopedic management services organization, formed by Beacon and Revelstoke Capital Partners.
Blankemeyer is a graduate of the Xavier University, having earned a master’s degree in healthcare administration. He serves on the executive board for the Andy and JJ Dalton Foundation, the data governance committee at the Health Collaborative and the payer contracting and financial operations committee for TriHealth’s PHO. He is also a member of the Xavier HSA advisory board.
To contact Andy Blankemeyer, email ablankemeyer@beaconortho.com.