I moved to the US from Lebanon to escape war in my home country seeking a higher education degree at Purdue University. I proudly graduated with a B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering and went on working in the private sector for many years. More than a decade later, I decided to return and help rebuild Lebanon. Inspired by my brother’s work as a physician, I started a home health care agency in 1997 (www.homecarelebanon.com) as the service was inexistent at the time and very much needed.
Key health insurers did not take us seriously asking “who do you think you are to treat patients at home?” My reply was: “My Grandpa was a physician in the early 20th century and rode his horse from one house to another caring for his patients. We will do the same with nurses in cars, not on horses!”
Two years later, all insurers covered our services as we helped them save tons over hospitalization costs. We never looked back.
But in order to succeed, I knew that we needed sound technology to help us eradicate all Word and Excel files and move to a unified EHR system to manage the entire business. As such, we built from the ground up a system that would handle scheduling, billing, sales management, stock management, payroll, etc. with multiple iOS apps for our nurses, caregivers and sales team (www.homecaremaker.com).
But that was not enough for my entrepreneurial spirit. I needed more and decided to return to the US and deploy a specialized Customer Relationship Management for the post-acute care industry (www.isoratec.com) based on my long experience in the space. I sensed that it would succeed because our CRM would be the first to be made by Home Care people for Home care people and backed by skilled software developers.
Our aim was to create an affordable software to increase patient referrals for home health care and hospice and allow them to market their agencies. Thanks to a fantastic team of post-acute care experts and software engineers our system lets sales people outperform the competition with our unique patient referral management system, helping agencies get new leads, implement their marketing strategy and increase overall referrals.
As a result, Isoratec has been experiencing the greatest demand ever. Maybe it’s because more agencies are looking for an affordable, high powered, sales accelerator. Maybe it’s because we include CMS referral data at no additional cost. Maybe it’s due to agencies adding new business lines and programs.
Whatever the reason, more and more home health agencies are realizing the value of Isoratec and choosing us.
A long and exciting journey indeed that took me from Civil Engineering to Home Health Care and Software development!
Tony J. Onaissi is the founder and CEO of Isoratec, a home care technology company, and of Home Care Lebanon, a home health and home infusion business he founded in 1997. Contact Isoratec about CRM software at https://www.isoratec.com/
