Running five clinic locations, 30 physicians, and 50+ PAs and therapists while opening a sixth site takes more than a good plan. It takes someone who knows exactly which dials to turn and when to leave them alone.

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In this episode, Joe Zboch sits down with Kelli Anderson, COO at DMOS Orthopaedic Centers in Des Moines, Iowa, to talk about what operational growth actually looks like inside a large, independent orthopedic group.

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The conversation covers how DMOS decided to grow their workers' comp service line, the technology gap they found, and the referral portal they built to close it, their process for surfacing ideas from staff, and how Kelli thinks about AI in a way that's grounded in actual operations rather than hype. If you're scaling a specialty group and trying to keep the clinical machine running while also building what's next, this one's for you.

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👤 Guest Bio

Kelli Anderson is the Chief Operating Officer at DMOS Orthopaedic Centers, where she's been for over seven years, first as Director of Revenue Cycle, now running operations across all five locations. Before DMOS, she held VP and Director-level roles at Ciox Health, a national health information management company, with deep expertise in ICD-10 coding, clinical documentation, and revenue cycle optimization.

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📌 What We Cover

• How Kelli thinks about keeping daily operations stable while pushing major organizational growth initiatives, and why "keeping the temperature" is the actual job
• The quarterly employee focus group model DMOS uses to surface frontline ideas, and why one of those conversations changed their social media strategy
• How DMOS used peer benchmarking through The OrthoForum to identify workers' comp as a growth opportunity worth investing in across people, process, and technology
• The honest assessment process DMOS ran on their workers' comp service line, feedback gathering, gap analysis, and ultimately landed on a communication portal as the fix
• Why workers' comp referrals function more like B2B relationships than standard provider referrals, and what that means for how you build your technology stack
• How Kelli approaches moments when a project hits a wall, fix-it mode vs. step-back mode, and how to tell which one the situation calls for
• The framework DMOS used to choose Norwalk, Iowa, for their sixth location, zip code heat maps, housing growth data, and a little bit of luck
• How DMOS is already deploying AI in their call center and urgent injury clinics, and Kelli's filter for deciding which AI to adopt and which to watch from a distance

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• DMOS Orthopaedic Centers, a Des Moines-based independent orthopedic group, has five locations (sixth opening in Norwalk, Iowa)
• The OrthoForum, a national organization of privately-owned orthopedic practices; DMOS has been a member for several years
• Hatch, a referral operations platform for specialty healthcare

Referral management is the front door of specialty care. Most front doors are broken. This episode of Scaling Specialty Growth gets into why: fragmented workflows, no real data, and a process that hasn't been digitized despite decades of EHR adoption everywhere else. Joe Zboch sits down with Chris Poole, CEO of Hatch, to pull apart why specialty practices are still muscling referrals through with bodies, and what it actually costs them.

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Chris brings a rare combination of venture capital experience, early-stage healthcare startup operations, and a front-row seat to the referral data problem through Hatch's work with leading specialty groups. This conversation covers the gap between what executives think they know about their referral pipeline and what the data, if they had it, would actually show.

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👤 Guest Bio

Chris Poole is CEO of Hatch, the referral management platform built for specialty care. Before Hatch, he served as Managing Director at 25m Health, a LifePoint Health-backed venture studio, and as CFO of MetaPhy Health, a virtual care company serving gastroenterology practices. He also spent years as a Principal at Solidus Company, LP, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on healthcare. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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📌 What We Cover

• Why specialty practice CEOs consistently overestimate the quality and completeness of their referral data, and what they're actually working with
• The "muscling referrals through with bodies" problem: how front offices absorb broken infrastructure with manual labor
• Why the EHR has never been the right tool for referral management, and what it actually costs per referral to work around that ($30 on average, more for workers' comp)
• How slow patient outreach, days or weeks after the referral is made, kills referral-to-appointment conversion before the team even gets to the phone call
• What referral leakage looks like in practice: groups reaching out twice and stopping, leaving pools of unconverted patients untouched
• The case for a referral-first architecture: why referral management has to be the core product, not a feature bolted onto an EHR or patient engagement tool
• Hatch's current results: 30% reduction in administrative time per referral today, with a target of 50%+ by the end of the year, and full automation of a subset of referrals in development
• How private digital access doors and co-branded referral portals create VIP access lanes for employers and high-value referring partners

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Hatch, the referral management platform discussed throughout
• Joe Zboch on LinkedIn
• Chris Poole on LinkedIn

Rising costs and shrinking reimbursements are creating severe margin compression for specialty healthcare practices. To survive and expand, organizations must focus on sustainability. Joe Zboch sits down with Chris Poole to discuss the macro forces impacting operations and access leaders today.

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They outline how practices are balancing top-line volume with minimizing operational expenses to improve patient yield. Chris explains why relying on manual paperwork and throwing bodies at administrative problems is no longer a viable path. The conversation points directly at the top of the funnel: the highly fragmented referral process.

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Operations leaders will hear exactly why up to half of all referrals never convert to appointments. Fixing this leakage removes administrative bloat and builds stronger relationships with referring physicians. The discussion provides clear focus areas for teams working to bring down operational costs while driving patient volume.

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👤 Guest Bio

Chris Poole is the CEO of Hatch and a three-time healthcare CEO. He is an industry veteran with experience in venture capital and health system innovation. Chris started his career as an accountant before moving into healthcare investing and operations. A decade ago, he founded a virtual care company where he learned firsthand the importance of removing administrative bloat to improve both the practice bottom line and the patient experience.

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📌 What We Cover

• Overcoming margin compression by balancing top-line volume with the complexity of patient yield.
• Moving away from throwing bodies at manual tasks to create sustainable front-office models.
• Treating the patient referral process as a strategic business function to capture critical consumer insights.
• Identifying where patient leakage happens to prevent up to half of all referrals from falling through the net.
• Differentiating your specialty practice through evidence-based site selection and improved patient convenience.
• Strengthening relationships with referring physicians by modernizing the top of the funnel.

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Hatch
• Starbucks: location selection case study

Welcome to Scaling Specialty Growth

In specialty healthcare, growth is not optional. Scaling an organization while maintaining operational excellence and a world-class experience is the hard part. Welcome to Scaling Specialty Growth, the podcast dedicated to navigating those exact challenges.

Host Joe Zboch, Director of Marketing at Hatch, goes deep with the leaders who are actively doing the work. The show bridges the gap between high-level planning and daily execution.

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What to Expect

Every week, Joe explores the practical realities of scaling specialty clinics. The conversations cover the entire spectrum of healthcare operations to give you actionable takeaways.

• Designing efficient front office workflows.

• Developing high-level boardroom strategies.

• Turning ambitious growth goals into a daily operational reality.

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Who Should Listen

If you are responsible for leading growth and making sure those targets translate into actual operational results, this show is for you. Joe brings you the insights needed to keep your practice moving forward without sacrificing the patient experience.