Ben Neuberg CEO of Thrivewell Infusion | CEO's You Should Know

Ben Neuberg CEO of Thrivewell Infusion | CEO's You Should Know

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, with Steve Dawson. Welcome to this ex edition
of CEOs. You should know I am thrilled to be
joined by Ben Newberg, the CEO of Thrive Well Infusion.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi Steve, how you doing the happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
We're thrilled to have you. Thanks for coming in today,
Thanks for having me. So let's jump right into it.
I know that you started Thrive Well with your mother's
care and mind. Can you walk us through that initial
moment when you and your brother decided to turn to
a deeply personal need in the national healthcare system.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, actually it was my brother. He was the catalyst.
I would say. My mom was diagnosed with rheumatardathritis and
was living in Long Island in a town called Lawrence,
where I grew up in the house I grew up,
and going from Long Island to Manhattan to get her

(00:48):
treatment takes, you know, it could take upwards of two
two and a half hours. And when somebody has rumatoidathritis
to move those joints she had severe rheumatoidaarthritis. To get
her infusion therapy was a process, to say the least.
So my brother's like, it just doesn't make sense that
there's nothing like this like down the block from mom.

(01:08):
It's a simple infusion. And when he talked to you know,
a couple of nurses and specifically a doctor who's a
friend of ours, doctor Vickrmson Gupta, who's our partner, he said,
you can totally do this. Let's start working in a
process to get this done in her backyard. I was
at the time in the jewelry business and I said,

(01:31):
sounds pretty cool. Ira. I don't even know where to
go with that one, and he goes, h, well, let
me speak to these guys who own an urgent care
and see what they're doing. I built them. So he
had built these five Urgin cares for these guys and
the urgent cares were underperforming, and they owed him some
money and they said, listen, we'll give you a piece

(01:51):
of the business. And he said, at the same time,
can I build my mom a private room in the
back to get her infusions? And they said, sure, no problem.
So he built this private room in the back and
Longehold a couple of weeks later, I would say within
two days, a person asked if we can do an
MS treatment, a treat infusion for multiple sclerosis, and my

(02:16):
brother said, I don't know, let me look it up.
And I was there with my mom. I said, this
sounds pretty cool. Made a call to McKesson. They were
able to get the medication. Doctor some Gupta said yeah,
we could do this, and lo and behold the next thing.
You know, we're full deep in doing infusions for the community. Awesome.
And I would say about six months later we were

(02:37):
at four locations, all going out east, and then about
a year later we had hit nine locations in New York.
When I say out east east, you know, Long Island,
and we just kept going and that was about five years.

(02:57):
It was January one, twenty twenty, right before the COVID pandemic. Okay,
right before it was it all started. We had opened
up like three or four locations, and you know, it
happened to be that patients were kind of running away
from the hospital, especially autommune compromise, so we were getting
influxed and we just kept opening to facilitate that population.

(03:21):
That's awesome. Yeah, it's pretty interesting.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
What a journey. Yeah, I know you you were an
entrepreneurs in stage of twenty we just talked about. Obviously
you were in the jewelry industry. As you mentioned, how
did those early business ventures prepare you for thrive?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Well, So I first started, I was working for somebody.
This is this is actually pretty nuts. I never really
speak about this, But I first started. I as a courier. Okay,
I don't know if you, if anybody knows what that is.
But I was a gold courier to a tax free
zone in the Dominican Republic for production of jewelry. So
I would get on the plane, they would weigh up

(03:57):
our gold. I would get off the plane and bring
it to a tax free zone in Dominican Republic called
Zona franca, which means tax free, and they would produce
the jewelry and then I would be basically currying it
back to New York where they would calculate it and

(04:18):
weigh it in at customs so it equals the same
amount of gold that went to the Dominican and came back.
And then I was doing that for about three years
out of school, and I learned how to make jewelry
from the ground up there because it was all handmade.
And I started traveling all over the world see jewelry

(04:39):
being made in India, Italy, Asia, all over. Learned all
different types of findings from different places, and I started
to design my own jewelry, specifically in stainless steel, started
working with a company QVC Stance for quality, value and convenience.
Didn't know that, you know, when you sell them a

(05:01):
lot of jewelry, and things just started to you know,
go from there. What I've really gained that I applied
to this business. You know, this business is very different
than anything I've done in my life. Prior to the
medical business, everything I was involved in was a want product, sure,

(05:23):
and currently we're in a need environment. And the environment
that I'm in my business is a need product. So
I've come to realize that patient care is far superior
and gratifying than anything I've ever worked on. And understanding
what the gratification someone had from jewelry and seeing loved

(05:44):
ones getting treatment in a place and gathering together, and
having an environment where the providers providing that care in
a happy place versus other places where it's a little
bit more time. I'm consuming tedious a bigger process intake discharge,

(06:05):
making it very easy seeing that relief and is in
the relief of financial anxieties with our with our with
our department that helps throughout. That makes it so much
better for me internally understanding from before to now, just
a difference between a want and a need, the drive
is different.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
That makes sense. Yeah, now, I know family is really
important to you. What role has family, especially your daughter
and your mother played and impacted both your personal and
professional values as a leader.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
So my mom since day one has been like the
ultimate rock for me. I've been through a lot, you know, personally,
you know, and all that stuff. Everybody has moms, They're all.
Everyone's mom is the best person in the world. Everyone's
mom is there is number one person in the world.

(06:59):
I'm not discount I think everyone's mom. Everyone has a
number one mom. I'm just saying my mom might be
number one of number one, you know. So just seeing
the way my mom acted in general us growing up.
She could do whatever she wants, she could go anywhere
she wants. She didn't. She lived a humble life. She

(07:21):
was a very classy woman. She carried herself with dignity.
She treated us just anything and everything. Was always there,
no matter how hard anything we were going through, no
matter how difficult any task was, she stepped up. And
you know, seeing my mom battle these things because after

(07:43):
her rheumatoid arthritis, then she was diagnosed with pancreatic stage
four cancer and ultimately passed away two and a half
years ago. But thank you, during that timeframe she was
fighting a disease and seeing her stand up to that
disease created even a stronger will inside me and my brother,

(08:06):
to the point where when she passed, we were actually
faced with a dilemma at that moment, do we stop
what we're doing because the person we were doing it
for no longer here, so, you know, do we continue
doing these providing care for patients? Do we, you know,
or just stay stagnant, you know, go to a hospital

(08:27):
and say here, we want to sell this to you
or take over whatever it may be. Or do we
double down? And today I can tell you we've definitely
doubled down with you know, so many locations. But my
daughter seeing it is the next generation, her listening to

(08:49):
me on calls and fighting for patients against the insurance
companies which make things very difficult for patients, to make
it very hard for patients to get the care that
we provide because of the cost constraint, so they try
not to you know, I wouldn't say, they try not
to I shouldn't I should preference that differently, they try
to make it very difficult for patients and loved ones

(09:13):
to pursue care that would actually help them with their disease.
Dates and my daughter hearing me fight those cases, you know,
her seeing that creates a different environment for her to
grow in, and it gives me even more of a
of energy daily to do it so that I'm doing

(09:34):
something good that my daughter can say, hey, my dad
did something really cool, like he does something good for people.
So that's probably the impact of both of those individuals.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, when my mom sounds like a remarkable person and
you're helping create a family legacy that's going to be
able to live on with your daughter and beyond.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, you know, going back to the question about the
past businesses in this sess, one of the things that
I've recognized in business from entrepreneur there are different stages
where a business transfers and a mind transfers. So when

(10:14):
you start off with a business as an entrepreneur, it's
just like taking one dollar and turning it into two,
and then taking two turning into six, and then constantly
doing that with money. You know, trying to build a business.
That's how you look at it from the economics. Right
when you build a business like we're building. There's something
that in the world of business everybody throws out there

(10:35):
as like a very easy term. It's called scaling or scale,
scale a business. How do you scale a business? In
the world of banks and investment banking and worlds that
I've been involved in my lifetime, scale and how do
you scale something as a tremendous topic and if it's

(10:55):
a viable business for that to create extended value our
business transfer my mind transfers from entrepreneur to scale. It
is very complex to actually implement the words scale, implement
that process of scaling. In the jewelry business never needed

(11:17):
to really do that because you were just supplying a
design and you were build, you know, producing it, and
then you would ship it in. Whether it's one hundred
thousand units, whether it's seven million units, whatever it may be.
You're just producing it and shipping it in. You're not
necessarily in the retail environment where you're scaling up to
present the individual consumers. Here, you're dealing with multiple individual

(11:39):
consumers at a very very high level. Because there's a
lot of regulation attached, so you have to monitor so
many different systems and processes to scale it appropriately. And
I think most people who go from entrepreneur to corporatize structure,
they don't know how to make that transit. And I

(12:00):
think that transition was something I learned from the past
businesses to bring to this business. So and I think
my mom was intricle that in that because her constant
advice was don't run, walk than jog, you know, crawl

(12:21):
walk than job, you know, always bringing me back to
you know, make sure you complete each task. So you know,
it kind of corresponds to both for sure.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
I know thrive Well operates in a very fragmented healthcare space,
but you still have managed to be very innovative in
the space. What innovations are you most proud of that
has really helped you separate yourselves from the competition?

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Well, so innovating our space in general. So I'd probably
say early on when we first started, there were very
few people operating in this space out side of a
hospital network. It was very it wasn't known to see
inviatory infusion centers, small private room infusion centers for patients

(13:10):
who are on biologics or injections that just needed supervised
visits so they can get their treatment and do it
in and out as fast as they can. The reality
is is it was very cost prohibitive in the past.
If somebody goes to a hospital, they would get the
bill would be to the hospital, would be billing their insurance.
They would build a facility fee, then they would build

(13:31):
for the medication, then they would build for the administration,
they would be for the time value. So you know, economically,
the costs to a hospitals in some cases is anywhere
from two to three times the value of what we
would do our services for. So over time, I looked
at it and I said, this is eventually going to
be something that trends all of these services if we

(13:54):
can figure it out, right, So how do we do that,
and then how do we look at making it efficient
Because you want to see as many patients as you can,
but you want to give them the individualized care that
they deserve and deal with the disease state that they're
dealing with and manage it. So innovating an efficiency was
something we jumped on early. Anytime there was a you know,

(14:17):
new softwares around our business, we would be the first
ones to beta. There's an EMR that specializes in in
our in our in our business, we were one of
the first five to adopt the em R. Every time
that EMR would would every time that electronical record electronic
medical records is what EMR stands for. Every time they

(14:40):
would want to beta a new service, we would be
the first to do it. They would call us. We
would call them, we need to we need to figure
out how to move this. We would push them, they
would push us. Mainly we were pushing them in certain
areas and then recently we just did something with AI
that is even more incredible with a great company. And

(15:02):
you know, when I first met these guys, they're a
couple of guys like twenty eight to twenty six years
old around that age, the three of them, and they
developed a way for us to eliminate data entry completely
so there's no human data entry error, so that it
would be Yeah, so when we receive all of the

(15:23):
documents through describe, it automatically would upload into our EMR
and the documents would go to the appropriate location inside
the EMR, so that we can respond to any request
for you know, documents by a doctor or by a
payer specifically insurance. They request a lot of documents all
the time, so that they just made the whole process

(15:46):
easier and we spent a year working with them to
develop that system for our space. Again, our space is
you mentioned fragmented. It's completely fragmented and new. The advancement
of biologics and for direct administration through injection and intravenous
which is IV, has expanded. In two thousand and nineteen,

(16:11):
when we first started to you know, there were maybe
you know, twenty eight to thirty in the portfolio that
we were administering, or not even that. There was probably
maybe twenty medications that we were administering. Today, our facilities
administer eighty plus therapies. That's only in a five year span,

(16:33):
and there's about three hundred plus therapies that are currently
going for FDA approval for a direct administration to certain
other disease states. Rare diseases is what we focus on. So,
you know, I anticipate this space growing and growing and growing,
but it's growing at a pace that nobody expected. So

(16:53):
there are leaders that have jumped out of the gate early.
I think I would possibly say we're one of them
at this point, but there are others that are out
there in the country that have also jumped out early,
you know, to figure out systems and processes to do it.
I just think the way we do it is a
little different than everybody else. We look at things from

(17:13):
a different lens. My jewelry background adds a lot of
value because of fluctuation and pricing. That's a little bit
more complicated to explain, but it's it's assets and and commodities.
That knowledge helps a lot. But really the space itself
is going to start to flat flatten out where it'll

(17:37):
be more of a standardized you know, care at some point,
and I think we're heading in that direction. But yeah,
the space is still in the in the early stages.
I would probably stay around first base if we if
we have if I don't even think we've gotten the
first base in the space. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
And speaking of that, I know that you guys have
been scaling pretty rapidly over the last five years, right,
you have thirty locations across nine states. I know we
just talk a little bit about it, but where do
you really see that long term vision of the company
really going eventually.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
I mean, if nothing stops us every state in this country,
potentially internationally, but right now we take it like my
mom said, you know, walk and job, job, you know,
then run. But we just make sure each state that
has a need, if they come to us, if they
find us, then we do it. We don't necessarily run

(18:33):
to it kind of have been in a sit back,
go forward mentality. Lately, our mindset has changed to be
a little bit more aggressive in certain states that we've
opened and added, where we see gaps in the market,
where we see gaps in the country. I do see

(18:53):
us probably in twenty five states by the end of
twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Six, exciting vary.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
I don't know the exact amount of locations, but will
definitely be in the in the upwards of seventy plus
locations is my goal. I definitely see us hitting those
numbers and maybe surpassing those those numbers. There's just so
much need throughout this country for what we do. There

(19:21):
are medications that are subcutaneously delivered at home, and a
lot of those medications are very costly, and you know,
there is certain information that will you know, in studies
that have been done that show home administration while important
for certain you know, treatments, other treatments would probably be

(19:45):
better in a center like ours for patients to stay
adhereing to their treatment cycle and reduce hospitalization. And ideally
that's what we as a group, as a population, want
to try to bring down hospitals as multiple things that
can go with that. You know, obviously health is the

(20:05):
first and foremost thing that I look at. Patient first,
patient's health first, That's what always look at that first.
You know, if somebody is going to the hospital, they're hurting,
they're hurting very very much. We can't help them in
our place, which is a place of reprieve. So that's one.
The other thing is the costs, like I was mentioning before,

(20:27):
increased significantly, and you know, the age population of medicare
increases for us, it's kind of like we're all working together. Yeah,
and we have to understand that. And once you understand that,
you can actually build a model around it. And I
think our growth, our growth spirit will be pretty strong
over the next couple of years following the trajectory we

(20:49):
just had based on the pipeline of medications.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
It's awesome to see speaking out you just said patient
first mindset, Right. I think that's something that comes through
with throughout our entire conversation that that's probably at the
core of the company. With the scaling and with all
the introduction of different technology and AI and all the advancements,
how do you still keep that patient first human touch point?

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Great question. So it all starts with people, right, I'm
just the guy speaking here that they put a title on.
I really never lived with titles. I never had a
title when I was in jewelry. I didn't have a
title in this business. When we first started, I didn't
have a title. The truth, we went to a meeting

(21:30):
and doctor s Gupta printed cards for me that said
CEO and handed it out to everybody in the meeting.
And that's how I got my title. Ira got COO
because he did the same thing for him at the
same meeting. So that's literally how we got our titles.
But it starts with people. So when I speak sometimes

(21:51):
I speak on revenue cycle management because of my education
on how to get how to do reimbursement for these medications,
how to structure your billing and stuff like that. So
when I speak, the first thing I always say is,
you know Thrive Well is not a company to me
and my brother, it's our family. So everybody who works

(22:11):
at Thrive Well Infusion is considered a part of our family.
We've lived that since day one. Me and my brother
and the people who have worked with us have never left.
I think we've had maybe five or six employees that

(22:33):
have ever left our organization over five years, and I
think we're teetering like two hundred and eighty employees now.
So you know, everybody pretty much stays with us because
of that family mentality, and they provide that in care.
So the goal is to create that culture, whether it

(22:56):
be from top down, whether it be from an organ
organizational perspective, that culture needs to maintain its status all
the way through the patient care and anything else we do. So,
whether it's a nurse or somebody who's you know, driving
from center to center to center to center, you know,

(23:18):
making sure that it's stocked, making sure the refrigerators are stocked,
making sure there's supplies, making sure there's snacks, you know,
cleaning services that clean on off days. All of these
people greet them, say a load of them, how are you,
how's your family be? Personal? That all makes a difference huge. Yeah,
and it translates into the patients. Love that.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
For any entrepreneurs that might be listening in. What advice
would you give yourself all those years ago when you
were first starting out?

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Wow, Uh, I would probably say stay with it. The
waters are are very rough, they get rough, and when
they're really really at the roughest, they're going to get
even rougher. Understand that and stay with it because if

(24:10):
you can gain the experience during those roughest of times,
you can utilize that as a launching point for your
next move or the move you're working on right then
and there, and just keep going forward, complete tasks and
move on to the next and make sure you're moving forward,

(24:30):
not staying stagnant.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Love that great advice. I have to ask now, given
that advice, was there one moment or challenge while you've
been at Thrive Well that you were able to overcome
and you were able to learn from?

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Absolutely? Absolutely there were two. One of them is when
I really learned the biggest part of scaling for me,
developing that structure for scaling. At one point we were me,

(25:03):
my brother, doctor Simgupta, and two other employees and we
were running four locations ourselves with a span of like
five thousand patients, which I was doing all of our
prior authorizations. I was doing our billing, I was doing
our collections, I was doing our patient communication. I was
pretty much doing everything A to Z with AIRA on

(25:25):
the road, meeting with the doctors and taking care of
the providers and providing them updates and doctor sim grouped
to obviously doing the care. So we kind of had
a good setup. Oh man, that's crazy question. So what
I realized there is everybody has bandwidth at one hundred percent, right,
so once your bandwidth reaches one hundred percent, you can't

(25:48):
do anymore, right, So if you hit one hundred percent,
how do you relieve one hundred percent to expand? And
what I basically explained to IIRA and doctor Scots, we're
going to hire to relieve twenty percent and hopefully we
get eighty percent production, so we have a sixty percent windfall.

(26:09):
So we kind of took that methodology and formula down
the road and we kind of started to department well,
I kind of started to departmentalize our structure and understand
how to departmentalize and create appropriate swim lanes. So that
we can see any types of fractures within the swim
lanes and make sure that we repair the fractures, get

(26:33):
to them quickly so that we don't have any breaks.
And I use this language with my company and everybody
in the individual departments and teams. I always use the
language as swim lanes, fractures, breaks and things like that,
and they understand that it's easy to relate. You want
to be able to relate with your staff on the
same level as everyone. Also when you're working, you know,

(26:59):
something for us as a group, we work with people
instead of for people. So for instance, you know, yeah,
Rachel and Jenner here, they work with me even though
they're in a department and I'm overseeing that department. We're
working together on a project. Yeah together, Yeah, I mean

(27:20):
all of that stuff really is tremendous, you know, moving forward.
Like I said before, on the advisory side, we try
to apply that here.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yep, that's awesome, great advice. We covered a lot about Thrive. Well,
is there anything that you want the listeners to know
as a key takeaway we might have missed or anything
about the mission that he feels important for them to know.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
You know, one of the biggest things that people should
know is that they have a choice of their care.
In dealing with rare diseases and dealing with patients and families,
they're challenged with finding out that their loved one just
got diagnosed with a very rare disease and it's horrible,

(28:05):
like it's it's a gut punch, it's not a good thing.
But when you find that out and you stumble on thrive, well,
you have people that are about to get in the
fight with you, and it's going to be a serious fight.
And they're going to get into the fight not just

(28:25):
with you, but they're going to get into a fight
with your family. And you know, I'll give you an
example one one story from our journey. It was host
COVID and a medication went from only home back into
supervised care. Because it's a very highly reactive medication. People

(28:48):
react have adverse events and reactions to this medication, so
they require the patient to be seen in a place.
So the pharmaceutical company was tasked to help find the
location for this patient. So they tried, and the patient
wouldn't go anywhere. It was really a child, so the

(29:10):
mom didn't want to change the care because the patient
was doing so well at home. She didn't want to
risk changing anything like anybody else. If it's going well,
I don't want to change it. If it's not broke,
don't fix. The person's disease was maintained, she was a child,
she was maintaining it. So we had a center at
the time close to their home. It was in Terrytown,

(29:33):
New York. It was in Elmsford, New York. And got
a call and the child was my daughter's age. And Farah,
who's our cno, has a daughter the same age. And
we were on a call and I got off the
phone and I told her, don't worry. I'm making a
handle this. You got a daughter and I have a

(29:55):
daughter the same age. And I called them back and
I said, listen, our center is closed for the day
that you come, and you can come any time you want.
You can bring whoever you want. We'll have care there.
And we close the center for a day just so that
they could come and feel comfortable and see what the
experience was like. And we saw the patient they wanted,

(30:18):
you know, Disney Plus, so we got this any Plus
on the TV and you know, patient comes to us
now since then and it's been I think now three
or four years that the patient. Four years now, the
patient's been with us, and they're on these therapies, probably
for a long period of their life. They will be
on this therapy. So you know, it's things like that

(30:41):
that are patients are gonna are going to be dealing with.
They're going to be dealing with challenges as it pertains
to insurance. We have a whole team that will walk
them through the financial anxieties. And I think it's important
that patients understand that they're not alone in the fight.
There are people out there that will help them. There

(31:02):
are people out there. So you know, if a doctor
diagnoses you with with an autoimmune and you're looking for care,
extended care outside of the doctor's office, because doctors are
super busy. I mean, if you try to make a
doctor's appointment, and I'm in the state of New York alone,
if you try to make a doctor's appointment just to
get a check up, it's two three month way less

(31:24):
and you're lucky. And then sometimes they'll try, Oh, if
an appointment opens up earlier, I'll call you. They're very busy,
their staff's very busy. These disease managements require a lot
of attention before and after just in coordinating with the
insurances and their benefits. We have teams dedicated to that
so we relieve that stress for the patient and the

(31:45):
doctor's offices. So, you know, getting that message across is
something that I would want to get across for people
to understand that that services is a full service operation,
a thrive On Infusion, not just comment and get treated.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
It's awesome tuning in that wants to learn more about
thrival and fusions.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Which do they do? Should go to Thrible Infusion dot com. Okay,
or you can call our phone number. I think it's
two on two eight oh three three three three nine.
Perfect there.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
You go visit the website or give them a call.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Yeah, and someone will definitely help you out. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Well, Ben, thank you so much for coming in today,
for sharing you so much glory for telling us more
about Thrive will It's it's an amazing journey and excited
to see what you do next.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Thank you very much for having me that. This is
an honor.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Awesome Well, thank you again, and thank you all for
tuning in to this week's edition of CEOs. You should
know