Zack Usilton, Chief Development Officer at Senta Partners Shares Insights from their Partnership with Reston ENT to Expand its Network of ENT Practices

Shots:

Zack Usilton spoke about their partnerships with Reston ENT. He also elaborated on their past collaborations with some of the allergy groups
He also spoke on how these alliances will help Senta Partners to expand its footprint across 57 locations in 5 states in the Mid-Atlantic region
The interview gives an understanding of Senta Partners’ vision to deliver high quality care in allergy, asthma, immunology, and otolaryngology for better patient outcomes

Smriti: Can you share more about your partnership with leading ENT and Allergy and organizations? 

Zack Usilton: A little over three years ago, SENTA Partners set out with the mission of being the partner of choice for ENT & Allergy practices across the Southeast. Since that time, we have partnered with six ENT & three allergy groups totaling 34 ENTS, 28 allergists, 4 ASCs and 57 locations across five states. We are seeking partnerships with groups that believe that a partner like SENTA Partners can provide them a more secure future, with more time for clinical care and with a partner that strives to be a clinical leader in every market we enter. In that short period of time, we have enhanced our partner practices information technology capabilities, their recruiting and retention capabilities, and unlocked growth opportunities that have spent years on the shelf before our partnership.

In short, we help unlock all of the growth opportunities that have been burdensome to pursue, we alleviate operational burden while enhancing clinical capabilities, while at our core helping physicians fall in love with practicing medicine again. We do all of this while ensuring clinical autonomy fully remains with the caregivers.

Smriti: What is the goal of developing this network? 

Zack Usilton: Our goal at SENTA Partners is to provide practices with the capital and the tools necessary to be the best-in-class ENT or Allergy practice in their specific markets.  Between our management expertise with private practices and our investment in tools and resources to enhance practice capabilities, our goal is to allow physicians to focus on exceptional patient care while still maintaining a high level of autonomy and daily control. From a network perspective, we allow private practice owners to move from 100% risk in their practice today, to shared risk across dozens of groups. These benefits are in addition to benefiting financially from the associated growth of the whole enterprise.

Smriti: What are the benefits SENTA Partners will get with these alliances? 

Zack Usilton: For us, improving patient care is the ultimate benefit. We start with the benefit of shared knowledge.  Through our Physician Advisory Board and other joint social engagements, our physicians are able to share, learn and improve from the knowledge and experiences of their peers within the network. We have found that even in a market where we have an Allergy practice and an ENT practice, those physicians are learning from each other and improving patient care through our network.  When you combine shared knowledge with the innovative spirit and growth mindset of our more than sixty existing partners, you accelerate improved patient care in communities across our geography.

Smriti: What makes SENTA Partners peerless? 

Zack Usilton: It starts with the role of the physician voice.  This is a partnership driven organization in the truest sense of the word.  From our initial outreach to a group all the way to our Board, we are including and leading with the physician point of view. Half of our board are physicians. What better way to represent our intentions.

Additionally, our goal is to invest in our practice partners future. We are what you call ‘growth equity’ partners.  What clinical innovation have you been reluctant to invest in?  What personnel investments or growth objectives have been on hold?  This is quite different than the traditional view of private equity where the focus on cutting costs trumps investing in the future of the practice.

Smriti: Can you share further information about types of members that join SENTA Partners? 

Zack Usilton: For starters, we are unique in that our partnerships include both ENT and Allergy practices. Our members are typically practices who broadly fall into three buckets:

1) Are overburdened by the administrative toll on patient care

2) Foresee considerable headwinds for their practice, such as labor forces, rising costs, a looming recession, and payor contracting improvements. They are seeking to find a partner to take on these risks and headwinds.

3) Are excited about the prospects of investing in their practice for future innovation and growth.

Smriti: What are the growth plans for SENTA Partners?

Zack Usilton: Over the short term, our focus will remain on finding partners in the South, the broader Mid-Atlantic, select Southwestern states such as Texas.  Although geographic exceptions will exist. 

We have more than doubled our total partnerships in the past twelve months and have expanded from partnerships in one state to now partnering in five states during the same period and over the next few years we will evaluate our geographic stretch a bit further.  The road for us to collaborate with new ENT & Allergy specialists is very bright!

Source: Canva 

About the Author:

Zack Usilton is the Chief Development Officer at Senta Partners. Prior to joining SENTA Partners, Zack held numerous positions in Operations at DaVita, Inc. before leading much of the Southeastern Corporate Development team. He also held a national leadership role with DaVita’s Acquisition Integrations and Physician Engagement team. In his development role, Zack’s team oversaw dozens of joint venture physician partnerships, hospital-based partnerships, as well as numerous acquisitions. Zack graduated from the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University with an MBA and received a BA from the University of Georgia.