‘Why I Joined Tomorrow Health' by Dan Veneski, Senior Manager of Provider Relations
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Dan shares what brought him to Tomorrow Health.
My path to becoming a healthcare professional began the day I was born, it just took awhile for me to realize. Throughout elementary, middle school, and high school, I listened to my mother, a midwife, and my father, a pharmacist, talk about patient care and the hustle of working in hospitals. The stories were interesting, but I kept telling curious minds I would never become a pharmacist and I’d never work in a hospital.
In 2008 after receiving my degree in accounting, I finally realized I wanted to get into the healthcare industry. My degree positioned me well to work on the financial side of healthcare, but I was actually most interested in hands-on patient care. Two years later, I finished nursing school and began working as a Registered Nurse in a local emergency department.
I spent the next seven years traveling the country as an emergency department travel nurse. I learned a lot from my patients during those years, but there are two things in particular that I’ll never forget. The first was a saying I kept hearing over and over: “Don’t get old.” I haven’t figured out a solution for this yet, but I’m working on it. The second thing I learned was how dependent patients are on their home medical equipment, often referred to as durable medical equipment or DME.
When I decided to stop travel nursing, I moved from Seattle back to Scranton, Pennsylvania. I spent some time as a nurse in the surgical services at Geisinger and then as a RN Case Manager for Geisinger’s "Geisinger at Home" program. This wasn’t a typical case management role. I was driving to the patient's home, understanding what made them sick, and trying to make them better. I used every tool in my toolbox, from remote monitoring devices and IV antibiotics to coordinating home health and ordering DME.
Each time I went into a patient’s home, it was clear how critical a patient’s medical equipment was to them. Without these products, it was nearly impossible for patients to live the lives they wanted and it was my job to ensure they had everything they needed to stay healthy. Each piece of equipment they had decreased the chances of an unnecessary hospital admission.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to get patients the DME they critically needed to maintain their independence and stay healthy in their homes. I struggled with ordering these products, finding suppliers to deliver them, and ensuring they arrived on time. I spent my evenings after dinner calling patients to ask if their hospital bed or oxygen was delivered, wondering if the order I faxed went through or if I included all the right paperwork. It felt wrong and broken. Each time a piece of equipment wasn’t delivered on time, it felt like a poor representation of me as a nurse, and I worried how not having the equipment would impact the patient’s health.
I left my career in nursing around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I knew I could use the knowledge and skills I built as a nurse to make an even larger impact, and I was intrigued by the idea of startups. Throughout my job search I considered many opportunities, but no opportunities were creating an impact quite like Tomorrow Health.
Tomorrow Health launched as COVID case numbers soared and the pandemic magnified the impact DME has on patients. It was even more important now for patients to have the equipment they needed to remain in their homes. Every incremental hospital admission pushed my fellow healthcare workers closer to the brink.
Today, I am the Senior Manager of Provider Relations. In my role, I work closely with our Provider Relations team, ensuring that clinical teams in hospitals and outpatient facilities are utilizing our product to the fullest. Our team garners feedback from end users and we work cross functionally with marketing, product, and operations to improve our internal workflows and technology offering. The provider relations team is the voice of the customer, which aligns perfectly with my previous career.
Here at Tomorrow Health, we are building technology and workflows to support clinicians just like me. We are building technology to alleviate the headaches I faced as a care manager. We are striving to become the leading platform for ordering and managing DME orders from beginning to end, ensuring successful delivery as well as patient satisfaction. I never want to hear of clinicians worried about access to DME for their patients. That is why I joined Tomorrow Health. I will continue to fight like hell for patients, as well as clinicians, to continue building technology I once only dreamed of having.
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