Swindoll initially got her start in health care by working for corporate America. However, a lack of outside-the-box thinking and creativity in the corporate world motivated her to start her own business.
The vision evolved from identifying an unmet need for servicing medical providers in a results-oriented, outsourced and affordable manner. Catalyst was founded in 1998 to help physicians, hospital systems and ancillary providers develop their business and optimize their financial goals and practice efficiencies. At Catalyst, Swindoll exercises her ingenuity while strategically and tactically helping medical providers manage their businesses.
"I realized that physicians and other independent providers needed someone to assist them with managing the business side of medicine and represent them so they could focus on what's important," she says.
Austin-based Catalyst Consulting achieves this and more for health-care professionals who are starting new practices or assessing their practice operations and profitability in existing practices.
"It grew out of listening to what the industry was asking for," Swindoll confirms. Partnering with clients using a hands-on approach, the team at Catalyst Consulting knows how to turn visions into realities. With a clientele all over the country, Swindoll's company provides an impressive list of services, including health plan contracting and credentialing; practice management services; hospital contracting; electronic medical records assessment; selection and implementation; performance and profitability improvement strategy; and ancillary business start-ups like sleep labs, urgent care and ambulatory surgery centers.
Running into a variety of clients, Swindoll says the best thing about her job is that it never gets old. "I have met many dynamic leaders – both men and women," Swindoll says. "Doctors are an interesting profession to work with. Some are very compassionate; some have huge personalities; some are more about the money; [and] some have taken bankruptcy because they were great healers, but poor business managers."
Swindoll has worked with residents just out of medical school who need lots of handholding to step out and turn what they learned in academia into a profitable business – something they usually didn't learn in medical school. She's also worked with seasoned professionals who just want to change their practice or dissolve a partnership and open a new office where they can fly solo.
The beauty of Catalyst Consulting is that it doesn't follow a certain strategic plan with all clients, but offers a creative side to developing innovative solutions. "It's certainly a field where it's constantly changing and evolving," Swindoll says. "There are always new developments from the business angle, as well as research and treatment angles. It's never, ever boring!"
Dr. Harold D. Cain, pulmonary and critical care medicine specialist, needed assistance with his growing practice. Since it was virtually impossible to focus on both practicing his craft and sustaining a business, he approached Swindoll for help. "Tamra is extraordinary at her job because of who she is as a person combined with her knowledge of medicine and business forte," Cain says. "She knows how to connect with her clients and establish rapport, and is very wise in getting things done."
Swindoll finds the most rewarding element of her job to be the ability to meet a client's needs by starting with a simple plan sketched on paper and watching it blossom into a thriving practice where the doctor is happy working with a target group of patients a year down the road. "Making a client's vision a reality is a lot of fun," Swindoll says. "I consider myself a counselor, as well as a consultant."
The toughest issue Swindoll faces is clients with unrealistic expectations. Because the business of medicine is so complex, it is sometimes hard to explain the "why's and how's" of the work she does and to stress the elements of time and patience. "It is probably the craziest industry in the world when it comes to billing and collecting for services," Swindoll exclaims.
Growing up on a quaint little farm in Hutto, Texas, with a hardworking farmer father and savvy businesswoman mother, Swindoll always knew she wanted to do something to help people. She found herself latching on to sales at an early age because it proposed a challenge for her entrepreneurial spirit. "Being a business owner has so many highs and lows," she says. "It stretches your comfort zone constantly. There are so many unknowns, but that's also what is so invigorating about it. Every day is an opportunity for growth both personally and professionally."
The opportunity for travel in medical consulting is a plus. Visiting and exploring culture-rich places has always been a passion of Swindoll's, and owning her own business makes this possible. Constantly thinking and breathing different approaches for successful clients makes it difficult to carry on a normal work schedule, yet this doesn't pose an issue. "I do have some minimal parenting responsibilities, as I am the adopted mother of Alex, a beautiful, long-haired Maine Coon feline," she says.
Swindoll hopes consulting helps her be successful enough to meet her own financial responsibilities and allows her to travel and do medical mission work. "I began traveling to Belize about 15 years ago," she says. "I liked the country so much that I bought a small piece of land with intentions of building a little cabana. That way, I would have a place to stay whenever I visited. I still have the land, but no structure on it yet." Owning a business can sometimes get in the way of other aspirations – at least temporarily. But when a severe hurricane hit the country a few years ago, Swindoll found herself gathering donated items needed by the local people.
"I'd met so many who had lost so much," Swindoll says. She helped in Belize for a couple of weeks before returning home. Her exposure to Belize, like her experience with traditional healing methods found in the rainforests, has intrigued a vision that she hopes Western medical professionals can learn from. "It would kind of get them back to the basics," she says. "We don't have a corner on healing methods in the West, and many times our physicians have not been exposed to other cultures. I wanted to find a way to help doctors who had forgotten why they had a passion for medicine remember and re-create the excitement in their chosen profession in healing."
Swindoll envisions the ability to incorporate trips for doctors from the states to visit underserved areas in Central and South America. In addition to offering their services, they could receive new knowledge from ancient practices and healers from other cultures. "[It's] kind of a 'heal the healers' trip," she says. "I would hope that American doctors could be rejuvenated by the environment, the gift of service and the relaxation provided by the trip and come back with new inspiration."
Swindoll has no intentions of stopping now and admits she will probably never retire. "I always see opportunities that need to be explored," she says. "Both traditional and Western medicine have a place in our world." The biggest issue she feels facing her clients today is adaptability. "It's important that all those with health-care careers are adaptable to changes," she says. "Not changes in just this year or the next. We are in an industry that is totally re-inventing the way they deliver services, and we should constantly be seeking new and better methods to treat patients, achieve better outcomes and give consumers more for their money. We are a great country, and we have the ability to make great contributions to the world's health-care needs. With chaos comes opportunity."
For more information about Catalyst Consulting, visit www.catalyst-consultants.com.
