1. Paul Contris on BGE Radio's - Build, Grow, and Enjoy - May 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: I'm great thank you. How are you today?
Speaker 1: Pretty good, actually. You have an exciting background. Tell us a little bit about
your background. We try to let the guest do their own introduction here on
Build, Grow, and Enjoy so I don't miss anything, and our hosts don't miss
anything. Go ahead and dive in there and give us a brief introduction on your
background, Paul.
Paul: I've been involved in the healthcare industry for over 30 years now. I kind of
specialized in the long term care, senior care arena. 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. Started the company that I
own now, Welcov Healthcare, started it in 1997. 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. Before we
get into that, I want to take this first segment here on Build, Grow, and Enjoy and
talk about your interest in the healthcare industry. How did you get interested in
this? Tell us a little bit about how you built this business and put this whole thing
together.
Paul: When I was in public accounting, I saw a number of different businesses and
industries. The thing that intrigued me about the long term care industry is the
fundamentals and the demographics of our aging population. That was 30 years
ago, and at that point, it was pretty obvious that the older segment of the
population was growing at almost double the rate of the rest of the population.
The Baby Boomer age wave was going to be coming upon us, which actually, the
big age wave is hitting in 2020. It hasn't really even hit us yet, but going to be like
a hockey stick. Starting in 2020, it's going to be a very dramatic increase in the
percentage of elderly in the population.

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I saw a lot of opportunities in this industry segment. I also had some personal
experience. As a child, my mother tried to take care of her parents for about
seven years. She actually went down to their home in the morning and the
evening to make them their breakfast and their dinner. She was their caretaker
when they got into their 80s. It was very, very tough on her. I guess our mission
with Welcov is to provide an environment in a setting in a service level that
people can feel comfortable having their parents be there. 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. 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, the building of your brand and things like that. Tell us about
the industry itself, and how you came into it, and how you've built your business.
Paul: I got my start working for other healthcare companies. I was in the corporate
setting for about 15 years before I started my own company. I guess I was able to
learn what to do and what not to do, kind of best practices, working for other
people. When I began this company, I wanted to incorporate the best of what I
had learned. Also, being in the business for 15 years, I had exposure and access
to financing sources, deal sources, and that type of thing. That's how I was able
to start the business, I was able to work with people I had worked with in the
past and identifying good acquisition opportunities. Then I was able to get it
financed with the relationships I had developed while working in the corporate
setting.
We started with the acquisition of two facilities in Grand Rapids, Minnesota,
Northern Minnesota. Once I had a couple facilities in Minnesota, then I started
building my infrastructure there. That's where my headquarters is now, is in
Edina, Minnesota. We have a corporate office with a fantastic team of people
that support our regional directors of operations, and our facility administrators,
and directors of nursing, and various other aspects of facility operations.
Speaker 1: We've got Paul Contris with us today here 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 that you went through in building this
brand?
Paul: Building a company, there was ... Obviously when you first start out, you have
just the typical ... Maybe the first challenge was identifying a facility for
acquisition and getting some business going, which fortunately I was able to do.
Actually, my operating partner at the time, about two or three years into the life
of the company, he passed away. Very sad and unfortunate experience there.

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That was kind of a big challenge. I ended up finding my current operating
partner, Tom Boerboom, who is just the ... I think he's one of the best operators
in the country. He's just a wonderful person, wonderful friend, and I'm just truly
blessed to have Tom as partner. Tom's made a lot of our growth and success
possible. A lot of times, what appears to be an insurmountable challenge at one
point, can turn out to be really an opportunity. With Tom, I really lucked out.
Speaker 1: Paul Contris with us today here on Build, Grow, and Enjoy talking about an
incredible healthcare 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 on BGE.
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. Let's talk
about Welcov in this segment. Take me through the process of once you've got
the company established, where did you start the company at? Give me some
details on what services you guys offered in the very beginning. Take me through
the early days of this great company and its growth.
Paul: As I said before, the first two facilities that we acquired were in Grand Rapids,
Minnesota. It was the Evergreen Care Center, a skilled nursing facility, and an
assisted living facility, both on the same campus, actually attached. We provided
the typical services you see in a skilled nursing facility and assisted living facility
setting. Skilled nursing today really is not like nursing homes 30, 40 years ago
where people that could have been cared for in less acute settings were
warehoused in nursing homes. Those people are now much more appropriately
cared for in senior housing settings like assisted living or independent living.
In skilled nursing facilities today, we have people that need 24 hour nursing care,
RN's, LPN's, aides. We have programs that were only delivered in hospitals
maybe 20, 30 years ago. We have traumatic brain injury units. We have
ventilator dependent units, cardiac rehab units. It's really for people who are in
need of acute care, or somebody who's maybe broken a hip and just got out of
the hospital, and it's usually a short-term stay at our skilled nursing facilities.
Maybe less than a month, two, three weeks.
Our assisted living facilities 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 seven healthcare related services, like
medications and that type of thing.
Speaker 1: 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

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ever think when you started the company, that you were going to be doing all
this? Was this all in the plans in the very beginning?
Paul: That's a good question. I had been working for very large skilled nursing facility
chains as an employee, like I said, in a corporate setting. There was a part of me
that was looking forward to having a smaller entity with just a few facilities, but I
guess I'mjust wired for growth. I had the knowledge and the experience and
once things started clicking into place, it just was something that seemed like the
natural thing for me to do, was to grow the company. Obviously, growing the
company, there's definitely economies and scales. It 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 the new changes in the healthcare delivery system. With the Affordable
Care Act, and just the transformation of the Medicare/Medicaid business and
the movement to the manage care environment. In some ways, I think in this
industry today you have to have a certain level of size and scale 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 about Welcov Healthcare, and also
talking about his experiences in building, and growing, and enjoying this great
company. 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.
Paul: In the satellite offices, really we have our main corporate office in Edina,
Minnesota. You don't have any other significant satellite offices in the other
states. We have a panel of regional people who generally are on the road and at
the facility levels. Our corporate office provides all of the back office support, the
reporting and the accounting and all that, and the clinical support to all the
facilities.
Speaker 1: With these other facilities, how did you go about opening these other facilities?
Did they all open at once? 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: Virtually, all of our 60 facilities were acquisitions of existing facilities. It wasn't
like we had to go in and open them. We had to do that with a couple of new
construction facilities that we opened. We actually have 100 unit independent
facility under construction in Kansas right now, which will be opening in a couple

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of months. The vast majority of all these facilities were acquisitions of existing
facilities. You acquire the facility and just take over the operations. It was a
gradual, very gradual thing.
We started out with the two properties in 1998, and added one or two in the
next couple years. I think by 2010, I had about 12 to 13 properties. In 2012, we
did a major acquisition of a large family-owned chain, Landes Enterprises. They
had 34 properties, so that was a very transformative acquisition for us. We went
from 14 properties to 48. Since then, we've added another 10 or 12. It's been a
gradual process as we built the company.
Speaker 1: This week's Build, Grow, and Enjoy is Paul Contris from Welcov Healthcare. He
joins us today here on BGE Radio talking about how he build, how he's grown,
and how 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, 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: It depends on who you're comparing us to. A skilled nursing facility provides very
similar services, depending on the setting and the location. What I think
distinguishes us is our focus on the culture of basically treating others like you
would want to be treated yourself. It maybe sounds cliché, but it's the old golden
rule. We truly try to be fair with our employees. That's kind of where it starts. If
you've got happy employees, they're going to deliver good care, and you're
going to have happy customers. Not to say that there aren't other 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. Like I said, we're also on the progressive
cutting edge of the services that we provide. If you look at the traumatic brain
injury service, the ventilator services, and some of the other high acuity niche
programs. It's one thing that we, along with most of the other chains, we're
going after the higher acuity level, the more medically complex patients.
Whereas the "mom and pop" operators are struggling with that. That's really
where the business is going, and we're trying to stay into 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. Now, with Welcov Healthcare, you guys have been doing a
lot of amazing things and in doing so many, fantastic things with the business.
How have you seen the business of home healthcare, and just the healthcare
industry in general, change over the last five to ten years?

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Paul: You've mentioned home healthcare a couple of times. We have maybe six home
healthcare entities, but we are senior care, long term care. The vast majority of
where our business is skilled nursing care and assisted living and independent.
Home health is just very, very small portion of our business.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
Paul: The long term care industry, in general, has really gone through some major
changes and is looking at some major changes coming down the road. One of 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, '84, that was just the
very beginning of the introduction of assisted living and independent living. A lot
of the people that are now in independent care were actually in skilled nursing,
in nursing homes. That's been the major transformation of the industry in the
last 20, 30 years. They were maybe 16 nursing homes in the country back then
and it's about the same number today.
All the growth has been really in the assisted living and independent living arena.
That's been a big change so far. All the changes coming up right now,
particularly for the skilled care, for the nursing homes, 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 cost. We can the same services and quality of
care in our skilled nursing facilities that acute care hospitals can provide, in a lot
of instances. We can do it for a fraction of the cost that they can.
We're seeing a lot of opportunity in being able to take people who are more
medically complex patients in our facilities. 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 us today. Now 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: Yes, our website address is www.welcov.com and that's w-e-l-c-o-v dot com.
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.

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