Mediware taps new CEO

LENEXA, Kan. - As Bill Miller sees it, the post-acute care market is the next “pioneering space” in health care and he aims to position Mediware Information Systems as the leader in the race to settle it.

Miller, who joined Mediware as CEO in late July, knows a thing or two about where health care is headed as the former CEO of OptumInsight, a division of Optum that's focused on data and analytics. Optum, a $90 billion company, is a subsidiary of healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group.

“I've watched the largest commercial payer operate, and I've watched what they're trying to do, which is move care in lower theaters of cost,” he said. “If more care is moved into settings like the home, it's not only lower cost but often more effective. Mission accomplished.”

Milller replaces Kelly Mann, who served as CEO for 10 years. The management shake up follows Mediware's announcement in late 2016 that TPG Capital, a large private equity firm that owns the likes of Burger King and Chobani, had agreed to buy the company from Thoma Bravo.

As volume floods the post-acute care market, the need for infrastructure, software and analytics will be tantamount, Miller says.

“I want Mediware to be the company that those entities rely on as they go through those significant gains,” he said.

To get there, Mediware will double down on existing markets like HME and continue acquiring companies in ancillary markets to fill in gaps in its portfolio. Earlier this year, it finalized plans to buy Kinnser Software, a provider of software solutions to 4,000 home health, hospice an private-duty homecare professionals.

“What we did with Kinnser is a signal of things to come,” said Miller, who says he quarterbacked more than a dozen acquisitions in the nine years he was at OptumInsight. “When you're backed by one of the largest PE firms, you're going to stay aggressive.”

But as Miller says, “It's great to get wide,” in terms of expanding into ancillary markets, “but you also have to go deep.”

“Mediware has been on a path of being flexible and having an all-in-one platform,” he said. “Now we want to provide the ability for our clients to absorb more technology and services from us, because we can provide scale and support them from an infrastructure perspective. We want them to rely on us for more capabilities; we want to become central to their mission.”