Celebrating 50 Years of Compex

Compex is celebrating 50 years in the business! Take a look at a few of our team members discuss the evolution of the record retrieval industry including what we’ve accomplished and what to look forward to from us.

Mike Spongberg
Hello, everyone. I'm Mike Spongberg, Vice President with Compex. I've been in the record retrieval industry for over 25 years. The last 15 years of being with Compex. I have a few of my esteemed colleagues here with me today, and I'd like them to also introduce themselves.

Tony Bazurto
Hi. I'm Tony Bazurto, Chief Client Officer. I've been with Compex for 28 years.

Kevin Harbauer
And this is Kevin Harbauer. I am the new CTO and the newest member of the group here at Compex being here just a little over three months. Excited to be here today.

Mike
Thanks, gentlemen. And for those of you watching, welcome. We're really excited about the topic we have to discuss today. And for those of you who don't know, you know, we're celebrating an exciting milestone, 50 years in the business. So it's really a proud moment for us. And we wanted to take the time to discuss some of our major milestones for Compex as a business, as well as highlight some of the exciting things that we're currently focused on. And then, most importantly, we're going to talk about our vision as a company for the next 50 years. So I myself am proud to work for Compex because, you know, first and foremost, we're a client service business helping our customers solve their biggest pain points. You know, most of these challenges are always evolving, you know that. So there's a lot to discuss here today. So I'm going to go ahead and kick off my first question to Tony here, because we go way back here with 50 years of history. So, Tony, can you tell us a little bit about where how Compex got started and maybe what some of the major milestones are moving forward?

Tony
Sure, Mike, thank you. Yeah, it has been a while that we've been working. Compex was founded in 1972 in the L.A. area. It started off by serving Law firms and quickly expanded throughout California. And later we added insurance carriers to the client list. And the interesting part in the growth of Compex was biggest challenges for clients. And it was really understanding the value proposition about sourcing that record retrieval task and learning to trust a third party who ultimately was better equipped to obtain records on their behalf. This allowed us to come up with many industry firsts to resolve client concerns and give them that confidence. Just to name a few; In 1990, we introduced volumes and pricing for insurance carriers. This provided discounted rates for volume commitments, changing the industry by focusing on cost containment. Then in 2002, we launched an online portal document management system, which revolutionized the industry by offering the technology that could lead to a paperless future for our clients. In 2009, we added our medical record summarization products that were rolled out to many satisfied clients. And then in 2012, we began our expansion to become the first true national service provider in response to what our insurance carrier clients were looking for. In 2016, understanding how important the custodial relationship is, we created a portal for communication with the custodian, allowing them to provide us the records quicker and improving the overall record retrieval process. And then in 2020, we began recruiting a key C-level executive with unique skill-set to work with clients in defining the next generation of record retrieval and claims resolution. And to that end, that would be why Kevin Harbauer with us, who will also be speaking a little later.

Mike
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Tony. You know, how is our focus as a company evolved over the last 50 years, or has it, as it remained consistent?

Tony
Overall, Compex prides itself on being a true partner with our clients, focusing on innovation, process improvements, which address client pain points, creating efficiency and providing cost savings that our clients value while making sure that will react to life-changing events. So when we think of that, I think of a few examples of the differentiation in our products, in our business, what they include and how they came about. The one most recently that comes to mind is DICOM images. COVID, as we all know, was a life-changing event. It challenged the industry and led to us designing a solution to simplify the delivery and viewing of X-ray and MRI images by posting those images online in the universal DICOM format. This resolve the issue of the remote workforce that our clients have not been able to access CDs which we could only ship to secure office. This allowed them to have an interface with the ability to not only view the images, to transfer the images electronically to IME vendors and third parties as necessary. Additionally, other clients came to us with solutions as they were looking to centralize ordering processes, accessing records from very defined parts of their organization. And we created the superuser access. This allowed for different levels of access and allowed for a centralized group to place order on behalf of law firms and claims offices across the country. And most importantly, as we developed this, we were able to combine it with the cross-reference to the state of the user who they were placing the order for, to make sure that all of the appropriate legal documents were created and processes followed for that state.

Mike
Very cool. You know, when I look back at it, Tony, I look at some of the things that that we introduced that were new to the industry that our clients, you know, were excited about. You know, things like our multi download to where a client could take all of their records on a case where there's five or ten different providers and just download them all at the same time instead of having to go to go to each one of them and download them all separately. So, you know, we've added different software here, there. You know, also our merge, merge and search got a lot of people excited and that allowed our clients to take their entire case and merge all of their documents into one PDF file so they could do a keyword search through all those documents at the same time. Really saved the attorneys a lot of time and late adjusters, you know, with having to track down, you know, key things like knee injury or back or ankle or wrist or things like that. So a lot of things that that we've done, you know, over the over the history of the company has made a big impact with a lot of people.

Tony
And I agree with you, Mike, I think the really great part of that is the relationships we've developed with our major clients, talking to them about the challenges they have and trying to come up with creative solutions that make sense. And these are all great examples of doing just that.

Mike
Thanks, Tony. So next, let's talk a little bit about present day. So, you know, I am going to talk a little tech with Kevin. So Kevin, there's, you know, obviously several trends that are impacting the legal tax base currently. What are they and how do you plan to address these trends and grow as a company?

Kevin
Yeah, Mike, great question. It's no secret that COVID 19 kind of changed how companies conduct business. And for many organizations, including our own clients, it's really accelerated their digital transformation journey. This accelerations kind of at the same time flooded these organizations with data. One analogy I commonly like to use is, you know, organizations are facing a tsunami of data because of this. It's getting harder, actually, for organizations to find the information and insights they need to make the quick and informed data-driven decisions. You know, at Compex were evolving to help our clients embrace their own digital transformation. And we're focusing on how we can help our clients move beyond the old ways of doing business. For instance, in the pre-pandemic world, a tremendous amount of records were still being, you know, received, processed and delivered using physical mediums like ink and paper. Over the last few years, we've focused on how to transform that record retrieval process and create a more end to end seamless digital process that allows for records to be ordered, collected and delivered electronically. All while this is happening our clients, and even us you know, normal businesses were bombarded by emails, phone calls, text messages, you know, just a whole host of distractions. And so we focused on, you know, how we can alleviate some of that burden by transitioning to a more digital engagement with our clients and our business partners, leveraging things like portals and dashboards. E-signing the DICOM viewer that you talked about and these other technical approaches is, you know, we're trying to reduce the impact this process has on our users. So, you know, it's a kind of boil it all down. We're really focused on leveraging technology to help our clients get the information they need, you know, faster and easier.

Mike
That's great. That's great. Kevin And, you know, a lot of those really, you know, points really resonate with me. So jump into the next question. You know, what are the services that we're currently most proud of? And, you know, has our last in the last 50 years in the business helped us get to where we are today?

Kevin
Yeah, I'll give you the kind of new guy perspective. I've only been here, you know, three months. But, you know, when I look at it more holistically, I think one of the big things to recognize is that you know, we're solely focused on accelerating that path to claim resolution. And we have this unique kind of ability to leverage our technology and, you know, 50 years of experience to provide clients the information that they need to resolve those claims quickly and efficiently. You know, when I take it down a level, and I think more specifically, there's a few things that come to mind. Our client portal, which is integrated into not only the leading claims platforms but, you know, thousands of record custodians out there really provides this kind of seamless and secure capability for our clients to, you know, securely and easily order and retrieve records. Um, you know, despite all the efforts in health care and all these other industries over the last decade to move to more electronic records and build interoperable systems, most records are still spread across this disparate landscape. And so, you know, our portal and our system allows us and our clients to quickly find and collect those records, acquire us that landscape of disparate and disconnected silos. The other thing that I think is interesting, again, we're most of us, including our clients, are, you know, they're working on many things at one time. And so we have this self-service reporting platform that really provides us unparalleled transparency into, you know, where claims are and the status of that record retrieval process. And this from what I can tell, it's kind of an industry first. And so, you know, we want to help our clients get the data they need in that reporting platform does that. And then finally, you know, I just call out the summarization service. It's been around for a few years, but truth summary, you know, helps our clients a significant time processing and analyzing medical records. Because of it, we're able to drastically reduce the time it takes to review a record and provide some really cool and useful features like chronological ordering, indexing of the records, providing summaries and all of this allows, you know, the client to really dive in and hone in on the things that are most impactful to their case.

Mike
Yeah, that's great. I mean, it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack sometimes when you're looking at a full case and that that summary product really, you know, lets the clients, you know, jump in and see exactly what's going on and find what they're looking for a lot easier. So, yeah, I agree 100%. The other thing, you know, as a fellow employee, you know, I think that you know, our geography has really made a huge impact. And that's I think, what I'm most proud of as being part of our account management team. You know, we've taken a service that was primarily, you know, on the West Coast. And now we have 36 offices spread out throughout the country. And we're obtaining records via authorization or via subpoena in all 50 states. So it's really been a great run over the last 50 years, and we've seen a lot of growth. So with that being said, you know, I wanted to kind of jump into our next question. I'll direct it to Tony. You know what? Our clients want most and how have we been able to serve those needs better than our competitors?

Tony
That's a great question, Mike. As we talk to clients on a regular basis, it's obvious what the clients want most is timely delivery of complete records and transparency. In our report by bottom line is they pay us for our expertise and to that end, we must deliver on a sincere, concise and clear manner to them. We're about simplification to give our clients a simplified experience by removing complexity in the insight gathering process of their records. They really want to know we are going to be able to get the records that we're going to provide them, what it is that they're looking for. Quickly, this, too, that means we've developed this self-serving reporting platform that provides unparalleled transparency that Kevin mentioned, that is taking our real time data, showing the good and the bad to our clients to celebrate the things that we've done well, but also identifying the areas that need improvement. The bottom line is we don't share just part of the story. We share the whole story. This allows us to become a better partner by holding ourselves accountable for performance.

Mike
Excellent. Thanks, Tony. So let's kind of shift here and move into the future, you know, exciting stuff. It's always great to talk about the future. So I'm going to direct my next question to Kevin. As you know, where do you see Compex, you know, in the future, and are there plans to expand our company footprint or enhance any of our platforms?

Kevin
Yeah, the future is really exciting and there's a number of critical areas I think we're focusing on that would be worthwhile kind of mentioning, uh, you know, first, you know, as a technology-led service, we're going to continue to support our customers on their own digital transformation journey, you know, as part of this, we'll continue to look at how we leverage integrations to other systems and how we bring other services to ultimately deliver on, you know, what Tony talked about with, you know, faster turnaround times and really getting the customer the information they need and reducing the impact of that paper. I'd say the second area, while maybe not as exciting to some, it's really critical and that's cybersecurity. You know, that that threat continues to grow. And we're going to continue to look at how we evolve and enhance our own internal information security programs to make sure that the data that we're safeguarding is safe and secure for our clients and custodians. And then finally and this is kind of the area that I'm really passionate about is, you know, moving beyond, you know, record retrieval and leveraging technology to start providing that knowledge and that insights to our customer, you know, help them find that needle in the haystack. You know, we've shown the power of true summary service and how it can dramatically reduce the time it takes to review and understand a context, a complex medical record. But there's a lot more we could be doing, you know, we could be leveraging the data to identify missing data potentially, or, you know, predicting when events may have occurred or should have occurred and kind of really kind of what I think of as that Holy Grail is giving clients the ability to search a record in the same way they might search the Internet using Google. So definitely some exciting times ahead.

Mike
Very cool. Very cool. You know, 50 years in business is a long time, obviously. You know, what about the next 50 years? You know, when we look at the big picture, Tony, what do you think the future will look like in the record retrieval industry?

Tony
You know, Mike, that's a tough question. It's really hard to imagine what it will look like just as we go back to the last five years and see how much he retains, how much technology has changed. And we know that it's going to have a great impact from that perspective. I think the real keys for us in that time frame is to continue to be in meetings with our clients, understanding what their initiatives are, where they see the industry going really looking at other industry partners that exist to see what’s happening, making sure that we are looking at the right C-level executives that are driving the business and will continue to drive the business because the one thing I know won't look anything like what it is today. I could see record retrieval becoming an afterthought of what we do, because what we'll be delivering is an end product that gives them the answers that Kevin was mentioning, like a Google search that says, Here’s what we found inside the medical record. You'd have them as a source to review, but won't be the same as what it is today. So I think those are things that are really exciting and I hope I'll be here 50 years to see what has actually happened from that perspective.

Mike
Thanks, Tony. You know, Kevin, anything you want to pose with on that? Yeah.

Kevin
Yeah. I just kind of pile on Tony. What Tony said is, you know, this it's hard to predict what 50 years is going to look like, but some things I do think are going to happen is, you know, records are going to continue to become increasingly electronic. You know, getting access and understanding what's actually in that record is going to become increasingly important. And so I think what you'll see is, you know, evolving from being a records retrieval process to being a knowledge retrieval process, you know, will help you pull all that data together and, you know, really give the insights and allow our clients to get the knowledge they need out of those records to make those informed decisions.

Mike
Awesome. Yeah, I agree 100%. So, you know, those are all the questions I have for today, guys. You know, we talked about the history, you know, what's going on currently and where we're going for the next 50 years. So it's been exciting. I want to thank Tony, Kevin for what I thought was a very interesting conversation. So and thank you for that. You know, all the wonderful people out there listening to the podcast.