Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Leadership, AI, and Private Equity with Bo Bartholomew, CEO of EvidenceCare 2-13-25
Thu, 13 Feb 2025
In this episode, Bo Bartholomew, CEO of EvidenceCare and Partner at Rockmont Investments, joins Scott Becker to discuss the evolving role of private equity in healthcare, the power of AI-driven solutions, and key trends shaping the industry.
Chapter 1: What is the background of Bo Bartholomew?
Yes, thank you, Scott. And couldn't be more Honored to be included. Love your podcast and love all that y'all do. I am, as they say, a recovering hospital administrator. I've spent just under a decade initially getting into healthcare on the construction side. I was project manager to build a brand new hospital and then got asked to stay on after we opened the hospital to help run it.
and then bounced around a number of hospitals before we got asked to move to very four undesirable locations. And my wife decided I could go without her and that wasn't going to work. So I became, as they say, a forced entrepreneur and co-founded a medication management software company that we sold to private equity. I joined another a private equity company focused on nursing.
And we sold that and then started a venture fund. And our second or third investment was in evidence care in 2020. And the founding CEO and physician, Dr. Brian Fingler, who is still with us and is happy as a lark as our chief medical officer, decided he would rather someone else take the CEO range, and the board asked me to step in.
Evidence Care is a 10-year-old business that is a dedicated and anchored business. on empowering better care decisions. We service the hospital and health systems around our country. We are software that's embedded inside the electronic health records. And everything we do is designed to improve the physician workflow.
and bring the right tools at the right time to make the best decisions possible while also benefiting the hospital's bottom line.
Thank you so much. In a moment, I'm gonna talk about what trends you're watching in healthcare, but let me take a step back. You're about as good in principle the guy as I know, just a terrific, terrific leader and person. You live at this intersection of healthcare, venture capital, private equity, You've worked with private equity some. You've invested some.
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Chapter 2: How has private equity influenced healthcare?
And yet, more recently, private equity seems to be taking on the chin in the public domain. Talk to us a little bit about what's real, what's not real. Maybe just a moment on the good, the bad, and the ugly and how the public should think about private equity in health care.
Great question, Scott. 15 years ago, I was up on Capitol Hill testifying on behalf of our private equity firm, how they were bringing benefit. I think that the headlines right now, what I would say is anytime there are bad actors in any industry, the media will jump on that and so will Congress.
Chapter 3: What are the pros and cons of private equity in healthcare?
We have some bad actors in the hospital health system world that just happen to be for profit and private equity. That being said, some of the best hospitals and systems in the country in terms of quality care, patient outcomes are also for profit with very good moral ethical leaders at the top of the helm. So there's a bit of a black eye there.
I do think the way that healthcare incentives are aligned and the way the payer games force hospitals to price and to market, it highlights some things that are very difficult to navigate. So there's pros and cons. I think when you have the right leaders with the right character,
whether it's private equity or non-for-profit, you are going to have good outcomes that benefit and improve our healthcare system.
Thank you. And talk about, Beau, and I think you nailed that exactly right. There's going to be good players and bad players. Good ones can really do a lot of good. Bad ones make over leverage and put people in a more challenging spot, particularly in tougher margin businesses. Take a second on that. What are the core trends that you're watching this year that you're most focused on?
Chapter 4: What trends are currently shaping the healthcare industry?
Yeah, so I'll give you a couple that I think most listeners would identify with. And then I'm going to give you one that I guarantee you no one's brought up. High level, we are watching both at EvidenceCare, but also across our venture capital portfolio. Where does AI step in and make a difference?
I've looked at a number of, I'll call them AI dev companies who want to have a large language model and go sell anything and everything to everybody. I am not a big fan of those companies. I think the market demands their problems being solved, whether you use AI or whatever.
Chapter 5: How is AI transforming healthcare solutions?
And if you can tag the capabilities of AI to a discrete product solving a specific problem, you can probably have a winning formula. The other two trends I'm seeing a lot right now is the over an abundance of clinical workforce shortages from doctors to nurses and all the above. We as a health system, in general, a health ecosystem, have gotten real used at throwing bodies at problems.
And we've got to leverage technology, digital health tools, whether it's the next generation of electronic medical records, the digital health tools, et cetera. And then thirdly, the one that I don't think you'll have a lot of people acknowledge is I'm watching the trend of two types of investors.
There are investors, early stage seed venture capital private equity at all levels, at all the size checks who fall into two different buckets. There are investors who have a business equation on a spreadsheet where the motto is profit, profit, profit. And they will do whatever it takes to make those formulas work.
And then I also see investors where they really, everybody's a capitalist, they all want to make returns, all of us do, but they're willing to do it within a set of principled guidelines with a focus on value creation, quality improvement and real results through their investments, through the businesses that make healthcare better.
Chapter 6: What challenges does the healthcare workforce face today?
And when you watch those two camps, I think you're going to see more and more winners on the latter side of that equation. And I'm kind of personally watching those I've met over the years that fall into each camp to see kind of, how those outcomes play out. And generally, they skew positively. There's no facts or details on this. This is my own little study.
But that's a trend that I think people who care about people and anchor themselves in a purpose to make the world better are going to have outsized profit and returns.
Chapter 7: What types of investors are impacting healthcare innovation?
But the point, Bo, and I couldn't agree with you more, in both of us happen to be, by background, forced or chosen to be entrepreneurs. And one of the concepts about being an entrepreneur is there are multiple different kinds of entrepreneurs, but I've always found when I'm trying to do something great, the money ultimately flows. When I'm trying to build something great, the money flows.
Where if in contrast, if I start off with the concept of how do I turn something into a profitable business, and that's concept one, it never seems to work out well. And I think the two different faces of investors, those that are trying to build great businesses and actually do something well that takes care of people and solves a problem,
end up ultimately finding the money as long as they're keeping their eye on that too. Whereas those that start with the other sort of perspective of everything is spreadsheet driven, everything is money driven, ultimately don't often, sometimes often don't really solve a real problem.
And then, you know, there are instances where the money comes anyways, but it's not really the road to success or doing great things. Is that your experience or your thoughts on things too?
Yes, I was talking with my family this past week and ever since I was young, my brothers and sister and mother and father who passed away know I've always felt called to serve. I spent countless years in and out of missionary trips, served in the army to serve this great country we live in. And I did not know. That the calling of being entrepreneurs anchored on serving.
There is more sacrifice involved late nights, trying to make payroll, trying to solve problems than in any other profession. And if you understand that it's rooted and grounded in service to others, the broader market, your clients. then you're gonna be successful.
I do watch a plethora of business school students and others who want the tag title of entrepreneur because they think it's going to associate them with the wealth and creation of an Elon Musk. I would love that. I think most entrepreneurs would love that, but I think by and large, Your batting average for the next level of billionaires from entrepreneurs is pretty low.
But at the same time, it is the most fulfilling thing you can do, in my opinion, which is why I love it so much, because you're creating better cultures, better environments, better career paths for employees. You're solving problems for clients. And ultimately, you're creating a better world, which is one of the things I love waking up every day and trying to tackle.
Thank you very, very much. And, Bo, take a moment on what are you most focused on and excited about this year?
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