Back in May of 2002, I founded MRO with two colleagues to meet the evolving needs of document and disclosure management services for the healthcare industry. By developing a platform with advanced technology to provide a superior release of information (ROI) service to hospitals and health systems, we leveraged our prior knowledge and industry experience to better the market. As I reflect on 20 years in business, it’s amazing to realize how much the industry has changed.
Release of Information in 2022
When MRO was founded in 2002, the only method of record release was to scan physical paper copies of those records, even if at the time, the hospital had a document management system that was electronic. All processing of records required someone to physically be on site at the hospital, pull the record, scan it, and then print the records to be mailed out to the requester. Could you imagine if that was still the way we had to operate in today’s world?
Furthermore, most vendors performed all of their work at the client location and had a central processing center. Facilities like our National Service Center in Pennsylvania and Texas were not needed, and remote services and support as we know it today didn’t exist. Quality assurance, while still important back in 2002, had to be done manually by having an employee physically check each record that was going to be released.
And what about payer revenues for the ROI industry? Back then, it accounted for about 5% of all revenue, while today that is upwards of 40%. Why such an increase over 20 years? Well, it’s due in part to the ever-changing healthcare industry and its demand for information.
For instance, the average size of a health system is much larger today than it was in 2002 because of consolidation and expansion. As such, in the ROI world, companies like MRO needed to adapt and scale to be able to meet the increasing demands of our clients. When this change started to occur, the ROI process became infinitely more complex, and very few ROI vendors were able to specialize, scale, and have the expertise to support larger health systems.
Final Thoughts
When you start a new company, you usually go in with the intention to just survive. Personally, I saw the need for a company like MRO, and so did my colleagues. Here we are 20 years later, and MRO is the second largest ROI vendor in size, and we’ve won Best in KLAS for release of information for the last 9 years in a row, ever since it was a category ranked by KLAS. I never would have imagined the success of this company had you told me 20 years ago that this is where MRO would be today in 2022. It’s an accomplishment that not only I am extremely proud of, but something that every single person who helped MRO get to where it is today, should also be proud of. Happy 20th Anniversary MRO!
Hear from our current CEO, Jason Brown, and myself in a video celebrating MRO’s 20th year in business. Watch here.
