Garett Robertson was drawn to the health care industry almost by inheritance: he comes from a family of nursing-home professionals.
His entrepreneurial skills, on the other hand, he developed on his own, rising to chief executive officer of Deseret Health Group, which manages more than 20 long-term skilled nursing facilities in Utah, Kansas, Minnesota and Nebraska.
Robertson joined Deseret Health Group, founded in 2006, as a financial analyst and quickly rose through the ranks. He has pushed the company to focus its efforts on distressed facilities in rural towns. The company's data-driven systems include proprietary Web-based (and HIPAA-compliant) software that combines clinical, billing, care and financial information to help company leaders generate real-time financial statements and reports.
These reports, in turn, help Robertson and his team make informed decisions quickly and effectively. The company has strategic growth plans to continue focusing on rehabilitating distressed facilities in rural areas. This is where Deseret Health has demonstrated significant success at reducing costs, improving quality of care and increasing revenue — and the company continually is identifying facilities that could benefit from its services.
Now with more than 1,000 employees, Deseret Health is governed by a leadership team that is almost all "homegrown," nurtured and taught within the firm. The company's sense of "community" extends not only to its philosophy of building a community within a care center, but also to the communities in which those facilities operate and the company culture itself.