Paul Contris on BGE Radio – Talks About Welcov Healthcare – June 2015

1. Paul Contris on BGERadio – Talks About Welcov Healthcare –June 2015
Speaker 1: We've got Paul Contris with us today. He is an exciting, exciting
individual. We want to go to the telephones. Paul Contris is our guest for
the program here on Build, Grow, and Enjoy. We welcome to BGE radio -
Paul Contris. How are you, sir?
Paul Contris: I'm great thank you. How are you today?
Speaker 1: Pretty good actually. You have an exciting background. Tell us a little
about your background. We try to let the guests do their own
introduction here on Build, Grow, and Enjoy so I don't miss anything and
our hosts don't miss anything so go ahead and dive in there and give us a
brief introduction on your background, Paul.
Paul Contris: Well, I've been involved in the healthcare industry for over 30 years now.
I have specialized in the long-term care, senior care area and started on
the financial end as a certified public accountant and soon thereafter
became a chief financial officer for a long-term care nursing home
company. I started the company that I own now, Welcov Healthcare,
started it in 1997 and we grew from a couple of facilities to today we
have about 60 skilled nursing and assisted living facilities and a number of
home health agencies.
Speaker 1: We've got Paul Contris with us today here on Build, Grow and Enjoy and
he joins us live talking about the healthcare industry and his business as
well. But before we get into that, I want to take this first segment on
Build, Grow and Enjoy and talk about your interest in the healthcare
industry. How did you get interested in this and tell us a little bit about
how you built this business and put this whole thing together.
Paul Contris: Well, I guess when I was in public accounting, I saw businesses and
industries and the thing that intrigued me about the long-term care
industry is the fundamentals and the demographics of our aging
population. That was, I guess, 30 years ago, and at that point, it was
pretty obvious that the older segment of the population was growing at
almost double the rest of the population and the baby boomer age wave
was going to be coming upon us which was actually, the big age wave is
hitting in 2020.
So it hasn't really hit us yet but it's going to be like a hockey stick. In 2020
there's going to be a very dramatic increase in the percentage of elderly
in the population. So I thought a lot about the opportunity in this industry

2. Paul_Contris_June_2015_EDITED Page 2 of 7
segment and I also had some personal experience. As a child, my mother
tried to take care of her parents. For about 7 years, she actually went
down to their home in the morning and in the evening to make them
their breakfast and their dinner and she was their caretaker when they
got into their 80's and it was very, very tough on her.
Our initiative with Welcov is to provide an environment, a setting and a
service level that people can feel comfortable having their parents there,
and we provide a service level that we're all pretty proud of.
Speaker 1: We've got Paul Contris with us today here on Build, Grow and Enjoy. Now
building this business, take me through some of the steps there of how
you put this business together because here on Build, Grow and Enjoy
we're all about entrepreneurs and helping get the word out about some
of the different things that have happened and the building of your brand
and things like that. So tell us about the industry itself and about how you
came into it and how you've built your business.
Paul Contris: I got my start working for other companies. I was in corporate settings for
about 15 years before I started my own company so I guess I was able to
learn what to do and what not to do, kind of the best practices looking
for other people. Then when I began this company, I wanted to
incorporate the best of what I learned and also being in the business for
15 years, I had exposure and access to financing sources, deal sources
and that type of thing. And that was how I was able to start the business
was I was able to work with people I had worked in the past in identifying
good acquisition opportunities and I was able to get it financed with the
relationships I had built while working in the corporate study.
We started with the acquisition of two facilities in Grand Rapids,
Minnesota, northern Minnesota and once I had a couple of facilities in
Minnesota, then I started building my infrastructure there and that's
where part of my headquarters is now in Minnesota. We have a
corporate office with just a fantastic team of people that support our
regional and directions of operations and our facility administrators and
directors of nursing and various other aspects of facility operation.
Speaker 1: We've got Paul Contris with us today on Build, Grow and Enjoy and we're
talking about building Welcov Healthcare and also talking about the
brand itself. Now what were some of the hardships you went through in
building this brand?
Paul Contris: Building the company, obviously, when you first start out, you have just
the typical ... maybe the first challenge was identifying a facility for

3. Paul_Contris_June_2015_EDITED Page 3 of 7
acquisition and getting some business going. Which fortunately I was able
to do. Actually, my operating partner at the time, about 2 or 3 years into
the life of the company, he passed away. Very sad and unfortunate
experience there. So that was a big challenge but I ended up finding my
current operating partner Tom Boerboom who is, I think he's one of the
best operators in the country and he's just a wonderful person, a
wonderful friend. I'm truly blessed to have Tom as a partner and Tom's
made a lot of our growth and success possible.
A lot of times, the challenges that appear to be an insurmountable
challenge at one point can turn into really an opportunity and with Tom, I
really lucked out.
Speaker 1: Paul Contris with is today here on Build, Grow and Enjoy talking about an
incredible, incredible health care business, Welcov Healthcare. We're
going to take a slight time out here and when we come back here on BGE,
we're going to talk about Welcov and talk about some of the expansion
and some of the different things that they are involved with. We're going
to take a quick time out here.
Speaker 1: Now back here on Build, Grow, and Enjoy. We've got an amazing,
amazing guest with us this week, Paul Contris joins us. He's from Welcov
Healthcare. Now let's talk about Welcov in this segment. Take me
through the process of once you got the company established, where did
you start the company at and give me some details on what services you
guys offered in the very beginning and take me through the early days of
this great company and its growth.
Paul Contris: As I said before, the first 2 facilities that we acquired were in Grand
Rapids Minnesota, it was the Evergreen Care Center and skilled nursing
facility and student assisted living facility, both on the same campus
actually attached. So we provided the typical services you see in a skilled
nursing facility or an assisted living facility setting. Skilled nursing today
really is not like nursing homes of 30 -40 years ago where people that
could've been cared for in less acute settings were warehoused in nursing
homes.
Those people are now much more appropriately cared for in senior
housing cities like assisted living or any kind of senior care. So in skilled
nursing facilities today we have people that need 24 -hour nursing care.
We have programs that were only delivered in hospitals 20 or 30 years
ago. We have traumatic brain injury units, we have ventilator dependent
units, cardiac rehab units. So it's really for people who are in need of
acute care and somebody who's maybe broken a hip and just got out of

4. Paul_Contris_June_2015_EDITED Page 4 of 7
the hospital and it's usually just a short term stay in our skilled nursing
facilities. Usually less than a month, 2 to 3 weeks.
So there's these, our assisted living facilities is where we provide service
to people who don't need 24 hour medical care but they need assistance
with daily living and we provide meals and housekeeping and assistance
with several healthcare related services like medications and that type of
thing.
Speaker 1: Now when you first started this company, and you've been managing to
open all sorts of different centers and all sorts of new extension offices of
Welcov, did you ever think when you started the company that you were
going to be doing all this? Or was this all in the plans at the very
beginning?
Paul Contris: You know, that's a good question. I have been working for very large
skilled nursing facility changes as an employee, and like I said, in a
corporate setting and there was a part of me that was looking forward to
having a smaller entity, just a few facilities. But I guess I'mjust wired for
growth and I have the knowledge and the experience and once thing
started clicking into place it just was something that seemed like the
natural thing for me to do is to grow the company.
And obviously, growing the company, there's definitely a variety of scales
that really gives you the opportunity to have the corporate resources
necessary to stay at the cutting edge of your industry. In fact there's a lot
of mom and pop operators out there right now that are just getting out
of the business because they don't have the resources to deal with all of
the new changes in the healthcare delivery system. The Affordable care
act and the transformation of the Medicare business and the movement
through managed care environment.
In some ways I think in this industry today, you have to have a certain
level of size or scale there to be successful.
Speaker 1: We've got Paul Contris with us today here on Build, Grow and Enjoy. The
BGE radio network out of Atlanta GA, talking to Paul Contris about
Welcov Healthcare, and also talking about his experiences in Building and
Growing and Enjoying this great company. Now with these other satellite
offices and other things that you've done and expanded Welcov, do they
all offer the same sorts of services or is it different services at different
operations? Break that down for me and go into that in more detail.

5. Paul_Contris_June_2015_EDITED Page 5 of 7
Paul Contris: With the satellite offices, really we have our main corporate office in
Minnesota and you don't have any other significant satellite options in
the other states. We have our regional people who generally are on the
road at the facilities levels. So our corporate office provides any of the
back office support, the reporting and the accounting and all of that and
the clinical support to all of the facilities.
Speaker 1: With these other facilities, how did you go about opening these other
facilities? Did they all open at once or did you go in slowly and get one
going and then getting the other going? Take me through details on how
that happened for you sir.
Paul Contris: Mostly all of our 60 facilities were acquisitions of existing facilities so it
wasn't like we had to go in and open them. We had to do that for a
couple of new construction facilities that we opened and we actually
have our 100th independent living facilities under construction in Kansas
right now which will be open in a couple of months. But the vast majority
of all of these facilities were acquisitions of existing facilities. So you
acquire the facility and just take over the operations.
And it seemed like a very gradual thing. We started with the 2 properties
in 1998 and added 1 or 2 in the next couple of years and by 2010 I had
about 12 or 13 properties and in 2012 we did a major acquisition of a
large family-owned chain, Landus enterprises and they had 34 properties
so that was a very transformative acquisition for us. We went from 14
properties to 48 and since then we've added another 10 or 12. So it's
been a very gradual process as we've built the company.
Speaker 1: This week's Build, Grow and Enjoy is Paul Contris from Welcov Healthcare
and he joins us today here on BGE radio talking about how he Built, how
he's Grown and he continues to Enjoy his incredible business with this
home healthcare, Welcov Healthcare. What is the main difference
between what you do and what some of the other companies that are ...
and I wouldn't say competition, but some of the other folks that do some
of the identical work that you guys do? Take us through some of the
differences and why you guys are better.
Paul Contris: It's based on who you're comparing us to. Our skilled nursing facility
provides very similar services depending on the setting and the location.
But what I think distinguishes us is our focus on and culture of treating
others like you would want to be treated yourself. Maybe it sounds
cliché' but the old golden rule. We truly try to be fair with our employees
and that's where it starts. If you've got happy employees, they're going to
deliver good care and you're going to have happy customers.

6. Paul_Contris_June_2015_EDITED Page 6 of 7
And there are companies out there that do a good job of that. I can't say
necessarily we do a better job than anybody else but I'm pretty proud of
the service level that we provide. And like I said, we're also on the
progressive cutting edge of the services that we provide. If you look at
the grade injury service, the ventilator services and the other high-acuity
niche programs, it's one thing that we, along with most of the other
major chains were going after the higher acuity level, the more medically
complex patients. Whereas the mom and pop operators are struggling
with that and that's really where the business is going and we're trying to
stay ahead of the curve and capitalize on that opportunity.
Speaker 1: We've got Paul Contris with us today. He joins us live talking about his
incredible Welcov Healthcare. With Welcov Healthcare, you guys have
been doing a lot of amazing things and been doing so many, so many,
fantastic, fantastic things with the business. How have you seen the
business of home health care and the healthcare industry in general
change over the last 5 to 10 years?
Paul Contris: You've mentioned home healthcare a couple of times and we have
maybe 6 home healthcare entities but we are senior care and long-term
care.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
Paul Contris: This is the vast majority of our business is still nursing care and assisted
living. So home health is just a very, very small part of our business. But
the long-term care industry in general is really going through some major
changes and is looking at some major changes coming down the road.
The biggest changes from when I started in the business 30 years ago is
the advent of senior housing. When I started in whatever it was, '83 or
'84, that was just the very beginning of the introduction of assisted living
and independent living and a lot of the people are now in assisted and
independent were actually in skilled nursing and nursing homes. And
that's been the major transformation of the industry in the last 20 or 30
years is, there was maybe 16,000 nursing homes in the country back then
and it's about the same number today. All of the this has been really in
the assisted living and independent living arenas.
So that's been a big change so far and the changes coming up so far,
particularly for the scope here for the nursing homes are we are going to
try to capitalize on the opportunity provided by this new healthcare
reform the healthcare reform initiative. Basically, they want to provide
quality care but they want to reign in the healthcare costs. We can
provide the same services and quality of care in our skilled nursing

7. Paul_Contris_June_2015_EDITED Page 7 of 7
facilities that an acute care hospital can provide in a lot of instances. And
we can do it for a fraction of the cost that they can. So we see a lot of
opportunity in being able to take more medically complex patients in our
facilities and we're going to help the patient, we're going to help the
industry in general by bringing down costs overall.
Speaker 1: Welcov Healthcare, we've got Paul Contris with is today. Paul, as we wrap
up here with you my friend, tell us how we can access you online, any
social media links, any phone numbers, any of that information so the
good folks here on Build, Grow and Enjoy can get in touch with you.
Paul Contris: Yes, our website is www.welcov.com and that will have everything you
need as far as contact information and information in general on the
company.
Speaker 1: Fantastic stuff. I appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for being on.