Interview with Alejandro Badia, Co-Founder and CEO at OrthoNOW Orthopedic Urgent Care
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Starting a business is a big achievement for many entrepreneurs, but maintaining one is the larger challenge. There are many standard challenges that face every business whether they are large or small. It is not easy running a company, especially in a fast-paced, ever-changing business world. Technology advances, new hiring strategies, and now, political changes coming with the new administration, all add to the existing business challenges that entrepreneurs, business owners, and executives have to deal with.
Maximizing profits, minimizing expenses and finding talented staff to keep things moving seem to be top challenges for both SMBs and large corporations. We have been interviewing companies from around the world to discover what challenges they are facing in their businesses. We also asked each company to share business advice they would give to a younger version of themselves.
Below is our interview with Alejandro Badia, Co-Founder and CEO at OrthoNOW Orthopedic Urgent Care:
What does your company do?
OrthoNOW is the first and only orthopedic/sports medicine walk-in care center of its kind. We specialize in the wellness, preventative and treatment of all orthopedic and sports injuries. Our company is changing the way expert orthopedic healthcare is delivered. Services include patient services (hand/elbow, hip/knee, shoulder, spine, etc.), care delivery (fracture care, casts, splints) and rehab. This is a disruptive innovation in the manner that orthopedic, sports medicine and acute injuries are assessed and managed. We are headquartered in Doral, FL, and are a franchise model with centers presently in Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Georgia; additional centers are under development. We have been in business since 2010.
What is your role? What do you enjoy most about your role?
I wear two hats at OrthoNOW. I’m the CEO and chief medical officer (CMO). It’s an incredible honor to be in both of these positions. I created OrthoNOW after years of frustration seeing patients come to me after a visit to the ER or a general urgent care center with no real treatment for their injury. The challenge with healthcare is that there is an overwhelming amount of regulation that often times doesn’t make a lot of practical sense, especially when trying to care for people. I enjoy developing and bringing to fruition solutions that work around these obstacles while providing an efficient and more effective way to deliver orthopedic healthcare. What I enjoy most is my CMO role, where I am engaged in defining the overall business strategy and direction of the organization, as well as guiding the clinical expertise.
What are the biggest challenges in your business right now?
Our biggest challenge is getting the public and referral sources in the healthcare industry to change behavior. Changing the knee-jerk reaction of going to the ER for significant injury, or to a general urgent care center for a nagging pain, has to change. The professional expertise is usually not present in these general facilities. Changing the behavior will undoubtedly be a key to decreasing healthcare costs. Another challenge is educating the public about OrthoNOW as a walk-in orthopedic care center. We are working with a public relations organization to educate the public and media while building the brand.
If you could go back in time, what business advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?
I have a few pieces of advice for the younger version of myself. The first piece of advice: think like an entrepreneur and take more business courses and consider pursuing an MBA. All physicians need some kind of business training. The next piece of advice I would offer is: learn from your mistakes and your failures. This is the core of being an entrepreneur. You have to get right back up and keep moving forward. And the last piece of advice: read and learn. Read business books; read about people’s failures and successes. The point is to learn, experiment, fail and succeed.
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