07/ 25/ 2007
Jim Cox
Medkinetics LLC
www.medkinetics.com
Franklin, Tenn.
Health care and technology don't always go hand in hand, but Jim Cox of Medkinetics hopes to change that. His Franklin, Tenn.-based small business helps hospitals and other medical facilities simplify their workloads, improve patient safety and reduce their risk.
"For years health care has been steeped in the tradition of paper and manual processes—and it's just now beginning to adopt technology as a solution," says Cox, this year's winner of the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence in Customer Experience Award.
Since its founding six years ago, Medkinetics has been a pioneer on that frontier. Its Web-based software allows medical facilities to keep track of which procedures physicians are certified to perform and update those privileges as quickly as possible from anywhere Internet access is available.
Medkinetics' technology also makes compliance with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations easier. To meet the commission's standards, hospitals must verify the credentials of new doctors through a process called core privileging, which requires them to specify what doctors are qualified to do and what further training they need to keep those privileges.
"There was no place to get all of this information in one coherent form, let alone manage it—and that is how we found our niche," Cox says. "We can install our system in a hospital and put a tremendous amount of power at people's fingertips."
The idea for the technology came to Cox when his wife, a pediatric ophthalmologist, came home one day with an armload of credentialing forms, each about 20 pages long with different formats and requirements.
"She wondered why she couldn't fill them all out at once," Cox recalls. "She told me, 'You're a technology guy—why don't you figure it out?' I started writing the software that day, not with the idea of starting a business, but with the goal of helping her."
Today, Medkinetics offers hospitals and medical facilities the ability to customize the software to meet their needs. And the company is always looking for ways to innovate and expand its reach. "We like to stay on the cutting edge of solving problems for our clients," Cox says.
As this year's winner, Cox will receive a lifetime NFIB membership, $30,000 in Dell products and services and will visit Dell's Round Rock, Texas, headquarters and meet with Dell executives, including chairman and CEO Michael Dell. He already has some ideas about how he'll use the award. "There are some things we would like to do on our production site that have been unaffordable up until now," he says, "so we won't have a problem putting the money to good use."
Prescription for success
How can technology boost your business? Jim Cox uses it to:
Save time and money for clients
The technology that Medkinetics offers spares hospital administrators the tedious paperwork required every time they hire a new doctor. The software allows medical staff to verify the procedures a doctor can do from anywhere in the hospital, without wading through manuals or making endless phone calls. It also alerts them to red flags.
The system updates these privileges as new procedures and standards develop. "We not only give hospitals the information they need but also the tools to manage it," Cox says.
Stay ahead of the competition
Positioning itself as a Web-based business allows Medkinetics to offer its product worldwide. "Technology levels the playing field for us and enables us to do things with much lower overhead," Cox says. "If you deploy technology the right way, you can be much more agile than the big guys." When a new piece of technology comes out, Cox and his staff waste no time getting acclimated. Recently, they signed up to be part of a beta testing group for Adobe's latest application, ColdFusion. "We literally jump on every new thing," Cox says. "That can be difficult to do, but that's how we stay ahead."
Manage routine business and paperwork
Cox loves the technology side of running his business, but business management can be a struggle. Like his clients, he, too, uses technology to organize and manage paperwork. His favorite software is QuickBooks. "It does the work for me, so I'm not spending hours accumulating information," he says. "I don't even need an outside accounting firm. I can press a few buttons to get all of my financials, drop it on the desk of my tax attorney and be done for the year."
