“Campbell takes hold at Health Care Council”

Nashville Business Journal, by John Lavey, May 27, 1996

Laura Campbell is driven to make the Nashville Health Care Council succeed in the same way she has taken hold of other task in her life to make them work.

Campbell is executive director of the organization that was founded upon the recommendations of the Nashville Health Care Strategic Planning Project, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce's Partnership 2000 program. The study, conducted by the consulting firm, Louden & Co., examined the status and needs of Nashville's health care industry.

The way Campbell tells the story of how she moved into the directorship of the organization that intends to drive Nashville's health care industry into the daylight of national recognition, everything just fell into place.

But glimmers of her perfectionistic streak suggest it wasn't without the aid of her own efforts that Campbell decided to take a big pay cut and move from a job at Massey Burch Investment Corp., where she analyzed investments, to the NHCC, where she hopes to effect more change on the health care industry.

A straight-A student all through school, Campbell even prepares herself for a newspaper profile by interviewing her parents and referring to notes during her own interview.

What did fall into place for Campbell without her own meticulous preparation was an upbringing to which a career in health care seemed a logical progression.

"My family moved here 25 years ago," says Campbell. "At that time, both my mother and father started their careers in health care. It's been a continuing interest for me for as long as I can remember."

Campbell's father, Vic Campbell, is executive vice president for investor relations and government relations at Columbia/HCA Heathcare Corp., while her mother, Candace Campbell, a former nurse, is a case manager for Intracorp. Victor Campbell is well known in both Nashville's and the nation's health care community. He has met with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the subject of health care reform. Candace Campbell helped start one of the state's first home health agencies and was present at the birth of managed care in Tennessee, being the first case manager for CIGNA.

Campbell says she learned a great deal from both parents about health care. "From my mom, I learned how important communication is between the different providers of care to achieve an effective outcome," says Campbell.

"From my dad, I learned to create a cohesive message that's easy to understand. Through spending time around my parents, I came to respect the diverse elements of Nashville's health care community."

Her first job was as a 10-year-old, working in the mailroom at Hospital Corporation of America. Her father had come from Indianapolis and DuPont to work for HCA, then based in a house across from Park View Hospital. She worked there until graduation from high school, organizing shareholder mailing lists, mailings of annual reports and other financial statements.

She went to Rice University, pursuing a triple major for business management, political science and psychology. After college, Campbell was hired as coordinator of investor relations for Wessex Corp., a nursing home, home health and speech therapy company that had just gone public.

Wessex was acquired by Diversicare, which split into Nashville-based American HomePatient Inc. and Advocat Inc.

In 1988, Campbell moved to Massey Burch Capital Corp., the venture capital firm with a specialty in health care, communications and information services companies.

Campbell handled communications with investors, and she developed an investment conference in Nashville that attracted more than 400 investors. She became a partner and sat on the investment committee, analyzing potential investments.

It was at Massey Burch that Campbell was able to meet many of Nashville's top health care executives, like Joseph Hutts, chairman, chief executive officer and president of PhyCor Inc., and Rusty Siebert, who resigned last week as bureau chief of TennCare. Siebert started Inforum, now a provider division of MEDSTAT Group.

Both PhyCor and Inforum received start-up capital from Massey Burch.

"When I made a decision to transition out of venture capital, I knew I wanted to be involved in some way with Joe Hutts," says Campbell. "I admire his integrity and the way he empowers people around him."

Campbell says she wanted out of venture capital because she wasn't "using my skills as well as I could. I was also extremely interested in helping more entrepreneurial efforts than I was at Massey Burch. One out of 100 business plans were accepted. There are a lot of talented people not able to find the resources they need to start a business."

She informed her partners at Massey Burch that she was leaving and met with many top health care executives in town.

"I had many opportunities to join individual businesses," says Campbell. "I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could work for all those businesses?"

In essence, that's what she's done, because many of the board members of the Nashville Health Care Council are those with whom she interviewed when searching for her next move.

Then the recommendations from the Nashville Strategic Planning Project were released, and as Campbell says, "the day after I left Massey Burch I knew that's what I wanted to do."

The Health Care Council recently finalized a business plan and its board has met five times to give the small staff its direction.

Campbell says it's already starting to pay off.

"I think it's already working," Campbell says. "I've been with the council for 10 months, and received thousands of phone calls. People want information about Nashville's health care community and its businesses. They want to know what types of services the businesses have to offer, aggregates of the industry, entrepreneurs with business plans seeking capital, health care executives seeking jobs, companies looking for directors, and requests for speeches and presentations."

Campbell says she believes her schooling from her parents in health care is paying off and that Nashville has a chance to benefit from the efforts of the NHCC, which has more than $1 million of start-up money to achieve its goals of making Nashville the health care capital of the United States."

"These people are making a large time commitment, as well as a financial commitment, to make sure Nashville is strategically positioned for the future," says Campbell.