Hartford Business Journal

30 Hartford Business Journal • March 23, 2015 www.HartfordBusiness.com Meet the Winners Best Places To Work In CT 2015 #4 iDevices i Devices began its journey with the conception and devel- opment of the iGrill, one of the first app-enabled devices. Following several successful launches, iDevices has emerged as the premier brand in the Internet of Things industry. iDe- vices aims to connect users to their worlds with responsive products that enhance everyday life. Through the unique collaboration of its in-house team, iDevices is able to create products that are intelligent at their core. The company has its own in-house restaurant, The Byte, where a chef prepares breakfast, lunch, and dinner for employees. iDevices prides itself on its laid-back atmo- sphere, which includes happy hours every Friday, cookies on Mondays, tacos on Tuesday, and holiday parties and summer events for employees and their families. In addition to their regular salaries, each employee is eligible for a 20 percent bonus if the company meets its sales goal, plus another $1,000 if they refer a new employee who gets hired. Supported Charities: Winter Special Olympics, Birdies for Babies. Exercise: Offers six bikes for employees to use on a bike trail behind their office, stationary desk bikes to use while at work, and showers for employees who work out before, during, or after their time in the office. #5 QUALIDIGM Q ualidigm is a national health care, consulting, and research company providing innovative and scientifically- based solutions to transform care and improve care delivery and patient outcomes. As experts in the design and implemen- tation of quality improvement and patient safety interventions, Qualidigm serves a broad range of clients to advance the qual- ity, safety, and cost-effectiveness of health care. Its professional staff works closely with healthcare provid- ers to design and adopt proven quality improvement, work- flow redesign, culture change, teamwork, and communica- tion methods to help reduce errors and provide safer patient care. For more than 30 years, Qualidigm has worked with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Qualidigm hands out Big Cheese awards to employees who land major accounts, as well as gift cards for outstanding performances. The company holds regular outings to build employee engagement. Supported Charities: Wounded Warrior Project, American Cancer Society, American Red Cross. Upward Mobility: Qualidigm promotes from within whenever pos- sible and lets each employee showcase their ambitions by allowing them to stretch above their current position to other duties. #6 Fiduciary Investment Advisors, LLC F iduciary Investment Advisors LLC is an independent institutional consulting group with more than 20 years of investment consulting experience. FIA is an employee-owned firm with 100 percent of the firm's revenue derived from fees clients pay for investment advice. Its mission is to provide customized investment consulting services to assist clients in achieving their investment and financial objectives, while fulfilling their fiduciary obligations. FIA currently advises to more than $35 billion in fiduciary assets and its clients include corporate retirement plans, endowments and foundations, healthcare organizations, and public plans. All consultants receive a corporate iPad, are eligible for referral payouts for both new employees and new clients, receive bonuses for achieving professional certifications, and can get tuition reimbursement for continuing education. Best Place: This is the fifth year in a row Fiduciary has been named a Connecticut Best Place to Work. Running Time: Fiduciary employees run relay teams in the Hartford Marathon, and the company provides local sponsorship in road races. SmaLL/medium Company Category S I X T Y - S I X T H I N A S E R I E S Christopher M. Dadlez President and Chief E xecutive Of ficer Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center On Curing Healthcare On Fixing the 'Doc Fix' Fiasco To "patch" or not to "patch" … that is the question once again confounding Congress. Created in 1997, the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula was established to tie Medicare payment rates to physicians to growth rate projections for the U.S. economy. Since 2003, however, a succession of "patch" arrangements – now numbering 17 – have provided last-minute postponements of these payment adjustments. The reduction now confronting Congress: a 21.2% cut in physician payments, to become effective by March 31st. A cut of this magnitude would, of course, be devastating to providers already struggling to care for the ever-growing baby-boomer generation entering our Medicare ranks. Likewise, another delaying "patch" puts medical practices across the nation in a state of continued limbo, never knowing if or when to make the investments in technology, information systems, or staffing skill levels necessary to enhance their delivery of care and reduce the costs of that delivery. Various solutions have been proffered – namely, cuts to providers supplemented by increased costs to Medicare participants. Both will merely exacerbate the problems already faced by physicians and Medicare participants. In my view, the healthcare industry has been remarkably successful in bending the curve of healthcare costs – and I believe that we can expect more to come. And so here's a novel proposal: Make an investment, even if only nominal, in provider payments that those physicians, our real subject experts, can then use to show a return on that investment. They have already done so in many recent consecutive quarters through the continued introduction of value- based models of care. And they can, with support, accelerate that progress to meet our industry's guiding "triple-aim" goal of providing improved care to wider audiences at reduced costs. In summary, only in politics can inaction be labeled a "fix." If allowed to persist, however, the "patch" process, now on the brink of an 18th delay, will only widen the gaping hole that has already been a terrible drain on progressive healthcare innovations for our deserving nation.

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