Minding the 3Cs

ASHEVILLE, N.C. - Aeroflow's commitment to what it calls “The 3Cs” says it all about the 2017 HME Excellence Award first-place winner.

The Asheville, N.C.-based provider uses a focused commitment to “customers, co-workers and community” to make the right strategic decisions.

“Every strategic decision we make is checked against the 3Cs,” said President and CEO Casey Hite. “Does it align with all three? If we can say 'yes' to that, we know it's the right decision.”

By using the 3Cs as a framework, Aeroflow serves the HME marketplace confidently, without regard to current conventions, taking risks and forging new approaches to patient care.

“One of our core values is to be dynamic,” Hite said. “It is bred into everything that we do, starting with the employees we hire, all the way through to the products and services we provide, and how we go to market. We're not afraid to think differently and take chances, and we have an exceptional team of people constantly working together to make us the best.”

The sea change that has washed over the HME industry during the past decade has caused Aeroflow to evaluate its place in the healthcare spectrum and re-think its methods and procedures, and that has paved a new pathway to success, Hite said.

“For us, our biggest course change was moving to an employee-centered focus from a process-centered focus,” he said. “Over the last three years specifically, we have invested in our people. We are focusing on engagement and development. A great team can overcome obstacles and change course when needed. It's much easier to steer a ship in a storm with 300 people moving in unison as opposed to only five or 10.”

In an HME climate where revenues are under constant stress, Aeroflow has managed to maintain healthy financials “through equal parts amazing employees and luck,” Hite said.

“We are driving information from the bottom up,” he said. “We are able to create efficiencies that we may not have realized before because we have people bringing this information forward. More importantly, we take chances. Not all of them work, but some do, and we've been very fortunate with our successes so far.”

Applying for the award caused the organization to think introspectively about what they do and it brought some significant realizations, Hite said. By drilling down into the company's business core, he said the application team found value with each individual's contributions.

“Our founder Don Hite used to say, 'It takes each and every one of us' and this was a perfect reminder of how true that is,” he said. “Every person at every level of the organization had a hand in this award.”