Ross Shaw

Demonstrated Chief Operations Officer offering extensive knowledge in business development and strategic planning. Adept at analyzing data and performance metrics to obtain a complete business overview. Reliable operations specialist with extensive experience establishing policies promoting the company culture and vision. Pragmatic professional with solid experience in leadership roles. Adept at implementing strategic business plans, driving growth and improving operations. Skilled in financial management and stakeholder relations. Collaborative and dedicated to building and leading talented and motivated individuals.

• Achieved 90% increase in sales by introducing OpenERP (a SQL based open source system) for CRM tasks, inventory management and communication for HMS.
• Led a team of 120 in the development of M&A Project for Nationwide Medical.
• Documented and resolved 300 objectives using the above M&A project which led to efficiency gains in every department at Nationwide Medical.
• Achieved a reduction of 60% on days pending using Excel formatted, SQL Query, and graphical dashboard ready report. The report contained multi-directional variables able to assist department management and with the ability to report KPIs with pinpoint accuracy to stakeholders at HMS.

Review of My Accomplishments (STARL FORMAT)

1) Achieved a 90% increase in sales by introducing Open ERP (a SQL-based open-source system) for CRM tasks, inventory management, and communication for HMS.

Situation – We were presented with a situation at Home Medical Supplies where our retail sales were stuck at a number continuously for 3 years.

Tasked - We were tasked to achieve an increase in sales by using any creative means we had at our disposal to solve this issue.

Actions - My choice was to involve the use of Open ERP (currently known as Odoo). It allowed uniform interactions with CRM tasks, allowed us to scan and monitor our inventory after implementing some process changes, and improved departmental communication from sales to operations to customer service to delivery. I was instrumental in the database transfer of information from our previous three other systems by aligning the variable in each of the databases to be transferred to make sure they lined up with each other. The team I led needed to then verify the efficacy of the transfer and determine if there were any database transfer errors.

Results - The results were a massive change in sales as efficiency was smoothed out and customers were quickly receiving items. This had a measurable change in sales of a 90% increase from a prior for the single store at $32000 monthly to a sales amount of $61000 monthly which was maintained and grew for a period of 4 years.

Lessons Learned – The main lesson learned is that a change management mentality to modify systemic issues is required for a companywide understanding of the objectives needed to accomplish massive improvements and change.

2) Documented and resolved 300 objectives using the above M&A project which led to efficiency gains in every department at Nationwide Medical.

Situation – We were presented with an M&A Project for a merger and acquisition Nationwide Medical was looking into. During this project, a third-party assessment was made of all existing employees, and I was transferred from insurance collections to a senior project manager.

Tasked - We were tasked with an unquantifiable number of problems that needed resolution and we knew they existed as every department had roadblocks but couldn’t figure out why a client was taking so long to get through the system.

Actions – Multiple activities occurred during this period to resolve the problems. During the first year of activity and as preparation for the merger and acquisition portion of the project we needed to discover each problem that was occurring in our system. The first step was quantifying all the departmental problems we were having. So, we had an introductory meeting to go over the first steps. During this meeting we didn’t have too much discussion or length of time, but a quick introduction of our team and a request for any complaints about things going wrong or issues within the departments. There isn’t a quantification of the problem, we were looking for things that slow people down to getting the work down as much as problems that were communication errors between departments. Have you ever seen Ted Lasso? In the show near the beginning, the very first thing he has is a suggestion box. Like that suggestion box, we are looking for an answer to a problem and we don’t know where it is coming from, somebody giving us information about a shower with no water pressure seems very minor. But for a player who is trying to accomplish his task every day, that water pressure issue is one more frustration that slows him down. And much like these seemingly small problems don’t feel like they should affect everything, they do. This is where hundreds of objectives at once come. How do you solve a multidepartment issue when you don’t hear from every department first? You can make a change to one and disrupt the other. Much like data analysis, our first job was information. The second step is where the bread and butter come from and that is actions to take to change departments. It required us to use SQL queries to identify the specific issues matching the complaints. It’s searching for other issues where complaints weren’t made. With each department manager and with one-on-one and team meetings or conversations, I was able to lead and identify solutions and then have people within those departments complete tasks to finalize the objectives. If one does exist, it’s clarifying the movement between departments, takes the complaints of each department, and then searches for the dropped data, data entry errors, miscoded items, variables that weren’t transferred, or any other number of issues that exist in departmental changeovers with information together and verifying the issues are being resolved between departments.

Results - Third is using verifiable metrics, using the variables provided to detail the changes needed and their impact on each department. These variables must match or support directly the variables that are KPIs for the executive branch, or all the work is for naught. We used these variables to identify the smoothing out of departments and easing inefficiency. Two of the departments’ efficiency increased by as much as 50-60%, whereas the other two departments improved by a more modest 15-25%.

Lessons Learned – The main lesson learned from all these objectives is that we were able to dramatically improve the bottom line by increasing efficiency in each department by 15-60% and those improvements improved the bottom-line cash flow, as these kept us from claims rejection and problems.

3) At Nationwide Medical increased collections from $20250/mo. for Medicare patients to $135000/mo. for Medicare clients.

Situation – I was presented with a situation where Medicare collections had fallen into disrepair. About 85% of the claims were rejected and of the ones accepted, most were rejected a month later. Collecting these claims was in these areas.

Tasked - I was tasked with collecting all the money that was in arrears for Nationwide Medical. Nationwide Medical had a CPAP supply program that provided supplies periodically on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis depending on the insurance company’s guidelines. (The in arrears was around $450,000)

Actions - To solve this problem, I had to identify most of the errors based on rejection claim coding, find a solution that involved providing the required items, and then follow up and make sure payment was made. I looked up most of the errors in the coding system and identified that most were requiring a prescription to prove medical necessity. On a test run, I sent 5 in, and rejection came back requesting additional documentation proving medical necessity (namely a sleep study). I then collected those 5 sleep studies by contacting the doctor, sent in the requests, and then received payment a week later. The next payments came back clean, so I had my objective. At the time we had 3000 Medicare clients on the list. I then came back with a list of all 3000 active Medicare clients and used that list to create a physician contact list. This physician contact list was then contacted by the most amount in arrears to the least amount in arrears to make sure to collect the most money the fastest. Each person on this list was contacted by me by fax and email at the time. Any non-response within a week was provided a phone call, then phone call tracking to identify changed numbers. Once each doctor was contacted and documentation recovered where possible, we then sent the claims in.

Results - This recovery occurred in my first 60 days as an employee. Of the in-arrears amounts, we recovered around 380,000 dollars. For those that were unrepairable, we sent them to get replacement studies or prescriptions and smoothed out future financial recovery. This raised our monthly cash flow from $20250 to $135000. The company had about 12 employees at the time. They eventually grew to 95 within one year after this work. We dramatically accelerated all sales in all departments and had reached from 6000 clients when I started working there to 28000 clients, half of which were Medicare, by the time I had stopped working with Nationwide Medical. These clients were continuously recovering cash flow based on my initial structuring and after this point due to spot-on documentation processes and workflow procedures to maintain profitability.

Lessons Learned – The lesson learned from this was to make sure that you always look for the origin of an issue, rather than look at just the problem. Often the problem masks a deeper issue and finding that issue requires forethought, testing, and evaluation before making a time commitment to complete your tasks.