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From Tactical Ops to Treating Addiction: A Doctor’s Unique Path | Dr. Corey Waller
In this episode, we explore the journey of Dr. Corey Waller, Chief Medical Officer at Brightview Health, as he reflects on his career, from working with the DEA to leading addiction treatment, a transition that provides him a unique perspective on addiction and healthcare. Drawing from his diverse experiences, Corey offers insights into the complexities of patient care, discussing how he navigates regulations, empowers his team, and advocates for patients in an evolving healthcare landscape.
Transcript
Introduction
Dr. Corey Waller: I think you got to get yourself right first. You can't come into this wanting it to be about you. I mean, you just can't, you have to purely be focused on building and delivering great care for whatever your specialty is.
I think the second is recognizing in this field that customer service matters as much as anything any amount of smarts. We're used to being in charge as a doctor, right? People look to us in a code and you're supposed to give marching orders and do things, but that can quickly turn into inadvertent micromanagement and I always have to remind myself of trust your people. You've given them the tools. They're going to do a good job and trust that they're gonna make the decisions.
Anderson Williams: Welcome to Everyday Heroes, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the people who are building our companies from the inside every day, often out of the spotlight. With this series, we wanna pull those heroes out of the shadows. We want to hear their stories, we want to share their stories. We wanna understand what drives them, why they do what they do. How they might inspire and support others to become everyday heroes too.
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Corey Waller of Brightview Health. Corey's story is one that has taken him to polar opposite ends of the addiction treatment spectrum.
From policing and working with the Drug Enforcement Agency at the system level, to caring for patients directly as individual human beings dealing with their own struggles and traumas. This breadth of experience has provided him a unique perspective and a profound empathy not only as a doctor but as a leader of the Brightview clinical team who are doing this difficult work of addiction treatment every day.
In just the first few minutes of our conversation, Corey shows why he's such a unique doctor leader.
Dr. Corey Waller: I'm, uh, Corey Waller. I'm the Chief Medical Officer at Brightview Health, which is a multi state outpatient addiction treatment company that's a part of the Shore portfolio.
Anderson Williams: And before we dive in, do you prefer to go by Corey or do you prefer that I call you Dr. Waller? What's your preference?
Dr. Corey Waller: You know, this comes up interestingly, so Corey is fine and actually preferred because I'm not your doctor. And it can create some interesting inadvertent condescension by making people call you doctor. It always annoyed me when people are like, well, I earned it. And I'm like, well, everybody's kind of earned what they have, no matter if they have the doctor or not. So it's a little weird.
So Corey is perfect. Um, in fact, I had to force this on my employees, like in front of patients, I'm Dr. Waller, but outside because it creates a, “who are you?” answer pretty easily. But in the workforce, it's interesting. Many times as a doc, you can be really annoying pretty quickly. Um, and it usually starts with saying something like I'm Dr.Waller and they're like, I don't care.
Anderson Williams: We just met. You're not anything to me. You could call yourself that all day long, but prove yourself.
Dr. Corey Waller: They're like, that's neat for you. I'm happy. Yeah. They don't care.
Anderson Williams: That's hilarious.
A Surprising Background
Anderson Williams: As you can hear, Corey's humility and self-awareness are at the forefront of how he sees and understands himself and the world.
But when I asked what other interesting things we should know about him, beyond what we might find on LinkedIn or a quick Google search, I got an answer I never would have imagined, and one that explains that humility and self-awareness.
Dr. Corey Waller: To look at me or to look at my kind of nerdy, uh, past, you wouldn't think that I was trained by the Federal Protective Service as a tactical operator and did a bunch of doors with the DEA and other federal law enforcement and was the medical director for a SWAT team and spent a lot of time out in the fields doing some law enforcement, heavy lifting and some of those pieces.
And then, uh, I'm a rescue diver, have north of 400 plus dives. And so I guess those would be the two things.
Anderson Williams: That does qualify as interesting, Corey.
Dr. Corey Waller: Well, my wife said once we had kids, I was, I needed to stop flying in helicopters and stop doing things that required Kevlar, and she's still cool with me doing all my scuba diving, but the, uh, helicoptery, gun toting Kevlar things have not maintained.
Anderson Williams: So just quick questions. Like one, how did you get into that work, but then maybe two, how did you get out of it?
Dr. Corey Waller: It was interesting. My dad was a Force Recon Marine. So I grew up kind of with the military ethos in my house, uh, so to speak. But, uh, my dad is the one, he talked to me out of going into the military and, uh, interestingly.
And so instead I went to grad school and medical school out of college, but in med school, I thought I was going to do research and then I got to residency and the research was really boring for me. It was all benchtop research. And I just done grad school level benchtop neuromolecular biology and all of those things before.
And I didn't know what to do. I was really, just kind of bored. And one of my attending physicians in the emergency department at Thomas Jefferson was a retired DEA agent. He drove like an up armored Mercedes and had these crazy stories. He got sick of me whining on one shift one night. And he's like, dude, I'm setting you up. For a rotation down in DC with a friend of mine at the DOD. And so I was like, whatever.
So he set me up for this week long rotation to train as a tactical physician. And so I did this week long thing. I was like, Holy cow, this is amazing. Cause I'm flying in like helicopters around the mall at DC over the white house and all of this stuff.
And so it's interesting to go from that to what I do now, given that I was the guy doing doors on people doing drug deals to now I'm the Chief Medical Officer for an addiction treatment company and really have a lot of mixed feelings about how police treat my patients. So it's a very interesting transition.
Anderson Williams: And how do you think about that transition? Just in, you know, that's probably relatively unique, if not wholly unique to your experience. How do you think about both in terms of two different ends of looking at the profession, so to speak, but also your own transition from being in that what I would assume would be the sort of intervention and policing side of things to this caring for and treatment side of things that do seem like they could be sort of opposite ends of the conversation?
Dr. Corey Waller: And I think it's ultimately a pretty stark reality of how my viewpoint of healthcare in general changed over time. So I was trained in emergency medicine. I'd been a paramedic. I'd worked, you know, with all those things before I went to med school. And you feel a lot like a fireman and a policeman, and I've worked with that.
When you're doing that as a paramedic in emergency medicine, you feel like you're a part of that. And you feel like you're providing a service to the community, but almost never do you feel like you're providing much of a service to that person. It almost feels like an us and them mentality. Like you've done something that has required me to come out here and do something, and over time it went from doing this because you really care about people to just kind of being generally pissed at humanity.
And that was a hard moment to be like, I spent all this time and all of this effort to learn all of these things. things and I'm kind of an a hole, I get the end. And I, that doesn't feel right from this. And I, and it was early in my career that I decided that it's not about me. It's really about the people.
It wasn't just a, I woke up on Monday and decided it was, it was work to try to unwind those, but do that. It really is a pretty positive release of. Look, my job is just to care about making sure that people get good care in whatever form I'm delivering it. And it's not an us them. It is a team, collaborative effort. It just made being a doctor feel like I thought it was supposed to be.
Flip the Mindset
Anderson Williams: Corey's breadth of experience changed his perspective. And in changing his perspective and in changing his work, he rediscovered his own vision and aspiration for what it would mean to be a doctor. Given this, I wanted to understand from his perspective what the world outside of addiction treatment needed to understand about it that we may not.
And given your current role, I think most of the public who doesn't have their head in the sand understands or has read headlines or something about mental health crises in this country and the opioid epidemic and so forth. You've seen this from a lot of different angles. What doesn't the broader public know or understand about the work you do and the work of Brightview that we really should?
Dr. Corey Waller: Well, I think there are a couple of themes that make us different than standard health care, and I've worked it. Every level of health care of doing consults in a hospital interventional pain work that I've done in chief of a pain medicine for a large health system and an outpatient in that and addiction is unique in that it is the most highly regulated area of health care delivery. So we have more regulations than a heart surgeon to deliver outpatient care.
One of the reasons being is that. We prescribe and or dispense controlled substances to people with an addiction to a controlled substance. So it's a very high risk population, but most of those regulations aren't built because of risk, they're really built because of stigma. And so, all of those regulations require, many times, an entirely new layer of employees that you wouldn't have to have in any other healthcare business. Like, I never had to have a massive compliance department when I was doing interventional pain. Even in the groups that had multiple multiple sites in multiple states. You didn't need that.
And the other piece is that this is absolutely a team sport, and it requires there to not be an overtly strict hierarchy, meaning we try to wipe out hierarchy and just recognize scope of practice. So me as a doctor, multi board certified physician, 20 years of experience sitting in the clinic is no more important than my medical insistence. Is no more important than my associate's degree counselor, right? And it's because the patient may need something from me day one and day four. Everything they need might be coming from one of those other two people. And so you have to flip the mindset in this space to a team sport approach rather than the typical, I'm the doctor, I'm in charge, I do those things.
Those are the biggest modifications that make us different than standard health care. And I guess, you know, one third that lives a little bit in other places, but the payment modalities here are all over the place. Every state is like a different country in how they pay for it. Which codes and how much and how they put it together, bundle payments and this and that.
So you have to be like a payer ninja in order to get through this stuff and actually get at the end of the day, paid for the work that you do, because they don't understand how the business works. And so you have to one, educate them, but also negotiate in a pretty hardcore, very tactical way to get things across the finish line.
Creating Impact
Anderson Williams: Corey pretty clearly lays out the complexity of the work that Brightview does, from the people, to the process, to the regulation, and beyond. So I wanted to hear from Brightview's CEO, Chad Smith, about their work and why Corey has been so invaluable to Brightview.
Chad Smith: I think when you strive to do the work that we do, which is very mission oriented, we're dealing with an extremely vulnerable population with a really diverse staff of people.
Licensed and unlicensed professionals, you really need someone that they can look up to not just as a person, but within the organizational structure to have a lot of confidence that the work that I'm doing is going to be based in evidence and science. And I'm going to be pushing the envelope on not just running a really strong company and growing, but how are we growing our industry so that patients get better and better? Not just, hey, the services that we do now, but what's coming down the pipe that allows them to be even more effective.
And I think given Corey's stature, not just at Brightview, but nationally, our team gets a ton of confidence that if Dr. Waller is in on this, I can have a lot of confidence that I can go execute and it's going to be something I can be really proud of.
Anderson Williams: Corey talked about the opportunity to, you know, not just build a business or to see a certain number of patients, but to transform an industry that is dealing with social crises, that's dealing with talent shortages, that's dealing with stigma, that's dealing with all of this regulatory environment.
Can you talk about, from the CEO perspective, a little bit more about how Corey plays into that broader impact that you as Brightview are trying to accomplish?
Chad Smith: Yeah, Dr. Waller really sits at the intersection of all those functions, especially from an external perspective. So, despite it being a really big challenge for us, Addiction services as a healthcare venture is really a nascent industry.
So, so much of what happened 10, even 20 years ago, wasn't inside the ecosystem of healthcare for insurance companies. Wasn't a regulated practice. It was really more of a, you know, a non profit, AA NA model. And so, as we've been, you know, Pulled more and more services into the traditional healthcare model.
There is a lot of misalignment out there. Very infrequently, do we find that to be purposeful, but the industry is advancing so quickly that you have to get multiple stakeholders to really come alongside so that you can do what's best for the patient and it work inside of those systems. So when you think about the changes that even happened since COVID, telehealth being an inclusion and availability to our patients and our teammates, and that just generalize regulatory structure.
So every place we operate, we have state regulations, state licensure, and then we're also overseen federally by a number of different groups, DEA, SAMHSA, which is our sort of behavioral health organizing body. In a lot of cases, there isn't alignment there. So you're kind of stuck with like, well, rule A says one thing, The federal rule says another and Corey really helps educate folks on here's what's best for the patient.
So here's why we would love to see the rule evolved in this way. And a lot of times that's taking advantage of what has changed. So rules take a long time to change. So what addiction treatment rules were 10 years ago, in many cases, they're You know, just doesn't match the science that we have now found or the operating model that our patients are finding success in.
And so we really looked at Dr. Waller to say, how do you galvanize those disparate folks who already have a ton of work on their plate and just keeping together what they're doing and get them to drive change. And I think we've seen him be a really big participant in that at the federal level with some changes that happened earlier this year to really cement COVID era rules that were big changes for our industry that were temporary in nature that we were able to see cement and allow our patients to have a better experience.
Build a Better System
Anderson Williams: Corey's impact isn't just at Brightview and Brightview's impact isn't just on their patients. They're leading the addiction treatment field and creating new opportunities for more patients to get better treatment across the board.
Here again is Corey.
Dr. Corey Waller: I think we can build a system that works and is better than everybody else. I honestly want to work in this highly complex area where we don't have off the shelf answers because we're having to invent the way that it should be delivered. And I think that with the tools that we have at our disposal, the amount of operating prowess and the financial knowledge that we have at our fingertips, It's almost incumbent upon me as a chief medical officer to use every single one of those tools to build the best, highest quality intervention for a patient that is sustainable.
But how do we put these things together to deliver a high quality, sustainable, thriving business model for healthcare so that we can grow and increase access? And markets that don't have it right now and for patients that don't have it and for families who need help for one of their loved ones. I mean, to be able to do that, it's easy to wake up in the morning and want to do this when you know that you have the ability to modify things at scale.
Anderson Williams: It's clear that Corey isn't afraid of a challenge, and it's clear he has the passion and experience and drive to try to make change. But he's not operating alone. He's helping build a company to do this work, and developing and supporting a team who's working in the field every day. So I asked him how?
Dr. Corey Waller: You have to be quadrilingual in this role. Like, I can't just come in and be a doctor. I need to be able to build the systems involved, the policies, the procedures, the pathways, the implementation plans, the education, the quality overlay.
I also need to be fluent in the regulatory schema that we have to work in. I need to be able to read and decode regulations like a lawyer in many ways. And I need to be able to understand payments so that we can understand utilization management and medical necessity. I also have to speak data, because I need to run these things based off of a dashboard that I can point to and say, this needs to go up and this needs to go down.
So it's a matter of, in order to get from point A to point B, there's a lot of stuff that has to happen in the middle. And I do feel like in general, most, uh, physicians are pretty future focused. You have to be, it takes a long time to kind of get to the pathway, but it's also just the desire and need to learn.
And I think that I still see patients now, it's a rule that if you work for me, you see patients. If you have a license. I don't care what your title is, you have to interact with human beings. You can't forget how to do that. So I'm licensed in all of our states. I see patients via telemedicine or on site if I pop in.
And this ultimately gets to the heart of building a culture of continued learning. So you have to hire people and support people and really reward people who are doing that next best thing.
Anderson Williams: Corey, when you think about Brightview and all of your team across the company doing this difficult work day to day, doing difficult work with difficult patients and difficult circumstances, how do you prepare and take care of those people so that they can sustain themselves in this work?
Dr. Corey Waller: Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. So one is you give them the tools they need. So, you know, we have a great education team. We've built online learning for them. We give them support as we're onboarding them. So if you know your job, it's easier to deal with adversity in your job. If you're still trying to even learn how to do the basic pieces of it, then that's a problem.
So we definitely give them the tools to be able to do the work. Without any issue. And then we also let them know that a hundred percent of the time, they should do the right thing for the patient and that they will never get in trouble for that, that the patient needs come first. And as long as they're doing the right thing for the patient, we have their back and we'll take those hits for them.
And I think that you create a pattern of that behavior and people, that word gets around. And we've done that long enough now that it's trusted that when we say that we mean it. And then I think also getting in the weeds with them on this and if they need help, you dig in. So that's a big one is that they know that if they get behind, there's a huge waiting line on the tele portion of the service. You do it.
If they couldn't find coverage in a place and they don't know what to do, get on a plane and you go fix it. I mean, you do those things and it's that servant leadership approach that people will bend over backwards to make sure that they do a great job.
Not About the Dollar
Anderson Williams: What haven't I asked you? Corey, that I should have asked you about your work, about Brightview, about the industry, anything else?
Dr. Corey Waller: One thing, this was the first interaction I've ever had with private equity, and I would say I had no idea what it was when I came here. There are some preconceived notions out in the world, and I have found through this that being a medical provider in a world where private equity is funding the venture that you're in is actually a really compelling pathway to build at scale really quickly.
And I think that that was something that I didn't understand. I almost wondered if it was going to be adversarial. I worried that I would have to fight for things every time we were in a board meeting or every time we were doing it. And what I found was that if you give them the compelling data, then it's a non-issue.
We need to do this because of A, B, and C, and here are the way we're going to do it. And I'm like, okay, next question. And so I feel like that's something that I had a fear when I got here because of that unknown, but I've been really pleasantly surprised with how logical and thoughtful the people are that I'm working with.
It's not just about the dollar.
Anderson Williams: Dr. Corey Waller is an Everyday Hero whose superpower is his perspective. From doing drug busts, to working in hospitals, to treating addiction, to leading a company, to advocating for policy change, his experience hasn't deterred him. It hasn't defeated him.
In fact, despite all he's seen and experienced, and probably because of it, Corey holds a powerful vision. For what's possible in addiction treatment, and what a brighter future might look like through his leadership, and through the influence and impact of Brightview Health.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other Everyday Heroes at www.shorecp.university/podcasts There you will also find episodes from our Microcap Moments as well as Bigger. Stronger. Faster. series, each highlighting the people and stories that make the microcap space unique.
This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners and recorded in the Andrew Malone podcast studio with story and narration by Anderson Williams, recording and editing by Austin Johnson, editing by Reel Audiobooks, sound design, mixing and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.
Special thanks to Corey Waller and Chad Smith.
This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the Terms of Use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.