FASTMedical: Revolutionizing assisted-living reimbursements

Lauren Davis has spent her professional career taking care of people.

The founder of FASTMedical began her career in health care as a certified nursing assistant (CNA). She later earned her certification as a registered nurse (RN) and went on to become a corporate compliance officer at a large retirement center.

Ready to branch out on her own, she launched her Davis Clinical Consulting, a certified women-owned business, in 2014. The business supports training and other staff projects for assisted living centers.

While leading her consulting company, Davis began working on a solution to the disparity she saw in assessment standards in assisted-living facilities. After years of trial, error and testing, she launched FASTMedical in 2021. Headquartered in Beloit, the company’s software is available through Davis Clinical Consulting and is supported by the 20 nurses on the consulting company’s team.

“The idea behind this software is that it would standardize an assessment scoring model based off of patients’ level …and then it puts it into a score,” explained Davis. “The current regulation is that this assessment is done upon admission, whenever there is a change of condition, if you’re coming back from the hospital, and then annually. It might not even be a nurse doing those assessments, per se.”

Davis states that both patients and facilities will benefit by using the software.

“The product itself can help make a facility run smoother, help them staff appropriately based off of patients’ acuity, but then also be utilized to help be fair and transparent to family members … it allows them to update this assessment and it will then be more transparent on their scoring model,” she said.

“A lot of times buildings’ current state is they have their own individualized assessment tool that they use and a lot of times it’s not point-driven or objectively done, “Davis continued. “It’s all based off of someone’s opinion, very subjective data. This product will help minimize that subjectivity for patient payment to the facility.”

The software, developed by a third-party company, is currently being used at 45 facilities in Wisconsin.

“It’s pretty user-friendly, which is really awesome, “she said. “I think a lot of times when software is developed, they overdevelop it because they have all these really cool ideas from an IT department. But then when you use it like I would say a majority of software is not utilized to its full potential because there’s just so much to it. I really wanted to create something that was super easy, super to the point where it didn’t give you a lot of fluff.”

With success in the field and a roster of paying customers, FASTMedical is eager to scale the business.
 “The goal is that it’s affordable to all assisted-living (centers), no matter what the size is, and so the goal is to be more scalable than just focusing on larger organization, because if every building could utilize the same assessment tool or the same process, it would just help a lot of efficiencies in healthcare,” Davis said.

FASTMedical is one of the 26 finalists in the Governor’s Business Plan Contest. The company entered the competition in hopes of introducing the software to a larger audience. The bootstrapped company is currently generating revenue and is eager to scale the business.

When asked about the company’s next move, Davis said, “I don’t think anything’s off the table. I’m open to a lot of different ideas and suggestions. I would love again for this to be in every assisted living and every patient be able to take advantage of this tool. Anything that I could do to help get that going would be awesome.”

For Davis, the purpose behind FASTMedical will always be to serve the patient.

“It really comes down to providing the right type of care for the right type of patient. Hospitals are going to be requiring assisted-living (facilities) to take on more clinical accountability for these patients as nursing homes are closing. I want to make sure they’re set up to be successful because, in the long run, they’re caring for human beings. That is important. They’re human beings who are vulnerable, and they need somebody to be their voice.”

Davis wants FASTMedical to be that voice.

To learn more about this growing software company, connect with them here.