Leadership is finding your voice, inspiring others to find their voice, empowering people, and executing actions that make the world a better place. A great leader is the one who can view people as their true business partners, and not as their subordinates to be bossed around. The key to the leadership that empowers is ‘trust.’
“A leader needs to have the ability to earn trust from customers, partners, peers, influencers, management team and employees,” says James Paat, the President and CEO of InXite Health Systems. He is a passionate entrepreneur who believes “All stakeholders need to trust that the leader possesses the knowledge, experience, understanding, and skills to improve something that is meaningful to them.”
James has a deep faith in the idea, that a leader needs to turn the traditional organizational chart upside down and work hard to support each of his/her employees to be successful. Leading by example is of utmost importance to become an admirable leader. “Empowering the team members to make well educated decisions and taking risks as and when required are a few qualities that make a great leader,” he says. When one surround themselves with good people bringing good ideas, there are going to be times, when one will need to take calculated risks. A leader needs to look at these opportunities, and decide that a calculated risk is a risk they’re willing to take to grow their business.
Early Life of James: A Polished and Reputable Individual
Being a part of a family of doctors and nurses, healthcare has been a major part of James life. He completed his graduation from St. John’s High School in Toledo, Ohio. Most of his siblings and their spouses are also doctors and nurses. He has been constantly influenced by his father who was a physician. His father taught James through example that “success isn’t measured by the monetary strength you have but by the positive impact you have on people.” This influence of his father has been embedded deep inside James, and taught him how to work hard, work smart, and treat people with respect.
Over the years, James has had several business mentors that he admires and learned from; however, his greatest role model has always been his father. While talking about his father James says “he always measures his own success based on the success of his children and I have carried that principle forward in my life and business.” He adds, “In business, I measures my success based on the success of my clients, partners and employees.”
A Start of James’s Entrepreneurial Journey
James has always had a distinctive vision, so he decided to take a different course than medicine and he received his business degree from Ohio State University. After graduating, James spent ten years working at two separate innovative, high growth data management companies in business development, consulting, and management roles. Having an enthusiastic and inquisitive mind allowed him to learn a lot over the years on how data can help drive better decisions, improve quality & efficiency, and lower the costs. More importantly his observation on the challenges the markets and companies faced in implementing effective data-driven programs, and his passion as well as constant hunger to develop solutions to overcome those challenges, drove him towards achieving his goals.
He then decided to leave his cozy job, in spite of being the highest paid employee, to explore something that is risky yet extraordinary. James ventured into starting his first business in 1997, which was the first software-as-a-service company enabling large companies to share electronic data with their small-to-mid size suppliers. Under his nurturing and strategic leadership this company flourished in the first year, capturing many of the leading pharmaceutical companies, and over twenty thousand suppliers as clients.
After his first company was acquired, James founded his second venture, which developed a patented technology that was used heavily in the national security, and public safety markets for enabling data sharing across federal, state, and local agencies. James participated in many of the largest and most complex data-sharing projects in the country. With the valuable experience gained, James then went on to create InXite Health Systems in late 2013. InXite’s goal is to leverage the established technologies, techniques, and approaches used in the past, to help solve major challenges prevalent in the current healthcare system.
Improving Healthcare Industry through Patient-Centered-Care
The health care industry is going through a significant and needed change, which centers on improving quality of care and lowering cost. Globally and across the US, there is a need to improve patient outcomes and lower healthcare costs through proactive and preventive management of high risk, high cost patients. The term commonly known is Value-based Care. James quickly recognized that the current technologies and systems prevalent in healthcare were not designed to support the new and unique requirements of value-based care.
Hence, it was important for James to start InXite to leverage his background, experience and knowledge to support the transition to value-based care, improve the quality of care patients receive, and reduce the costs inherent in the fragmented health care setting. James believes that the next important shift will now be all about the patient. Patient-centric applications that improve a patient’s ability to make better data driven decisions for managing their own health care objectives will be of increased importance and InXite intends to be the solution for accomplishing this.
The healthcare industry has to make the data more portable and accessible for the patient. Strategic initiatives by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) such as MyHealthEData and Blue button 2.0 driven are excellent examples of the shift to the consumer and helps to validate InXite’s work in patient-centered data interoperability and application solutions.
Unique Services and Solutions of InXite
The InXite SmartCare System is an innovative technology platform that delivers a comprehensive set of capabilities that are critical for operationalizing value-based care and is designed to actually improve patient outcomes by enabling better data driven decisions. What makes the solution unique is that InXite is much more than an information repository, reporting and analytic system. InXite’s advanced data interoperability-as-a-service model significantly reduces the traditional time, cost and complexity associated with data integration efforts and removes the burden typically placed on the providers for standardizing data. Through InXite, healthcare payers, health systems, providers, patients and other healthcare stakeholders can gain valuable insights on patient risks and behaviors. As care plans are developed for mitigating those risks and improving patient outcomes, InXite becomes an instrumental data, communication and reporting tool to drive greater care coordination, patient engagement and care plan adherence.
Through the unique InXite mobile application patients can manage and share their critical health records; earn rewards for being a highly engaged patient; interact and communicate with care providers between their scheduled appointments; and receive patient education.
James’ Motivation and Prodigious Moments of his Life
The idea that InXite has the potential to make significant, positive, revolutionary, and market changing impact on the entire healthcare industry; is a major driving force and motivation for James. He says, “What we are doing is extremely important to not only improve healthcare costs, but more importantly we are improving individual’s wellness and ultimately saving lives.”
Throughout his life, James has been blessed with the numerous memorable moments, but he highlights some of them and says, “Seeing my daughter, Jacqueline, grow too quickly from being a baby that I cradled every night to now being a beautiful adult that is finishing college, and starting her own life,” he says. He measures his success based on the success of his daughter. Seeing her drive and take responsibility, James believes that she will have a happy life, which will make all of his hard work worth it.
Achievements and Future of InXite under a Competent Leader
The nurturing and valuable guidance of James has made InXite the most advanced platform that is transforming healthcare today and has grown significantly in all critical areas. Its technology and thought leadership has been recognized by the leading organizations, industry experts and publications; and InXite’s momentum continues to accelerate in reaching new clients, and partners that now include government agencies, payers, health systems, self-insured companies, third party administrators (TPA); Pharmacy Benefits Management Companies (PBM), and healthcare provider groups.
The InXite solution is also expanding to other countries where InXite plans to play a key role in modernizing the healthcare sector. It is certainly not resting though, and InXite is seeing an incredible opportunity to be a driving factor in improving healthcare and is very excited to embrace what the future holds. InXite has been referenced as the “Facebook for Healthcare”; allowing a patient and each of their healthcare providers to have a shared web portal for sharing information, communicating, and making better data driven decisions.