Multiple sources indicate CEO Joe Delaney wIll be leaving OneCall Care Management after their search for a new CEO is complete.
Delaney has been head of the company during its ownership by APAX, tasked with growing the business, integrating multiple acquisitions, and delivering the profits needed to satisfy investors and debt service expense.
Conversations with other sources paint a picture of a company struggling to meet financial targets. Tough competition from smaller, single-focus companies plus payers’ desire to have multiple vendors competing for their business has made the work comp medical services industry brutally competitive. That, plus the structural decline in claim frequency and reports of customer service issues made Delaney’s job a difficult one indeed.
Don’t know who will be assuming the reins, but they will be stepping into a very high profile position.
Hefty prices were paid for Align Networks and OneCall (the diagnostic imaging company around which the conglomerate was built). Owner APAX may try to add more components, but things may well slow down while the transition occurs.
If things aren’t going according to plan, we may well see efforts to increase revenues and reduce expenses. That will play out in the near future…
It is not so amazing to see what is happening on this front. It has happened before in the PPO field. Several years ago there was a lot of consolidation in the PPO arena along with acquisitions of other ancillary services i.e. utilization review, case management. The reaction was two fold. Carriers did not want to put all of their medical management business in one basket and providers did not want one belong to a giant PPO. The result was that Carriers unbundled their purchases and providers pulled out to go with regional PPOs. Not surprising that this occuring again. The WC pie is only so big and it is not growing i. e. claim frequency. It reminds me of what a history professor told be in college that the only thing that he learned from history is that we as a society do not learn from history.
Over the past few years, I have compared OCCM to a character on the old Star Trek Enterprise TV show called the Borg. The Borg travelled around through space and time, finding other civilizations to assimilate into their collective hive. The Borg’s best known line was, “We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
I imagine work life for many OCCM employees such as Delaney is a struggle and will become more so as they assimilate more companies and services. Payors don’t necessarily trust the big machine it has become, nor do they always want a one stop shop, one who (by the way) manages to channel business to its various services internally, sometimes without the payor even realizing it. There are still other options out there. It’s sort of like when Wal-Mart came to town, driving all the mom and pops out of business. Don’t get me wrong, I like Wal-Mart, and there are certain reasons why I go there. But do I really want to do ALL my shopping there?
Thank you. That made me smiling from ear to ear!!!
OCCM closed on their deal with APAX on November 1st of last year, so I do not find it surprising that Delaney has chosen to leave at this time. He probably stayed as long as his contractual requirements dictated.
As someone that worked for both One Call Medical and OCCM, I am dismayed by the turns that OCCM has made. One Call Medical was a well respected brand, with a wide variety of clients that came to associate them with superior service at reliable pricing. I do not feel that either of those attributes currently apply to what we now know as OCCM.
Former OCCM girl – thanks for the note and for reading MCM.
I’m not sure that is why Mr Delaney is leaving.