Most company origin stories start when someone has an “aha” moment while trying to solve a challenging problem. Ours is no different.
We start in Thailand. Skip Schwartz, our Chief Strategist, led an organization that focused on exporting Canadian healthcare expertise to the world. While working with Kluaynamthai Group, Skip pondered how to improve the care delivered at its primary care clinics, acute care hospital, geriatric hospital, and nursing homes.
The challenge was not dissimilar to what we deal with in Canada, the struggle to reduce wait times and bed occupancy while improving the care for citizens. Traditionally, the pressure is to build more facilities and hire more people. If you can't determine how many people go to a hospital at a specific time and with what ailments, it's impossible to decide what resources are needed.
The solution? Introduce coordination across the system; use nurses to provide personalized triage, guide patients to the best available resource, and offload the hospital.
It reduced waiting times from as much as 8 hours to under one hour and reduced bed occupancy from 105% to 80% while handling more than double the number of patients. Better still, patients had more in-person time with the doctor.
Serefin created the first health management organization in Canada following its inception in 2010. Our medical and technical teams have developed an innovative way to fill in the systemic gaps that affect patient care inherent in the Canadian healthcare system. To increase our capability, we continue to develop our proprietary health management platform. This innovative platform securely stores all client data and supports our team. The platform tracks everything; tasks, appointments, and records and integrates with other providers’ systems. Finally, it facilitates team collaboration and communication. As a result, our client-facing team can provide more personalized service and increase their efficiency tenfold.
This foundational belief in blending a protocol-driven software platform with high-touch personalized service has been the driving force behind our success in the healthcare space and the basis for exceptional service in employee benefits support, travel, rewards and contact center.
A senior leader having focused in healthcare, e-commerce and travel. Experience in building and leading high performing organizations. Consultant to airlines and e-commerce retailers. Extensive background in managing complex business partnerships. Proven negotiator, supporting Multi-Billion dollar contracts.
Specialties:
Building and scaling start up companies/divisions/geographies. Corporate strategy development and execution. Strategic management and execution of complex projects and transformations. Supplier/partner negotiations.
Trained as an architect, Skip specialized in healthcare facilities design. He was Partner-in-Charge of Healthcare at NORR partnership Ltd. He and his team designed award winning hospitals and clinics across Canada, doing groundbreaking work in architectural planning, long term care design, and accessibility. He has operated clinics and hospitals in various parts of the world, and was in charge of the healthcare practice in Canada for HOK – one of the world’s largest architecture firms.
"I have always been in the ‘caring’ business, either as a health system designer or an operator. My goal has always been to see how being innovative could improve our collective abilities to care for one another."
With a vision to deliver exceptional customer experiences and work with our clients to drive loyalty, Walter leads Serefin Experiences. Over his 30 years working in the industry, Walter has held senior/executive roles or has consulted for some of Canada’s largest contact centres. In his previous role as Chief Operating Officer with Tour East Holidays, Walter utilized his technical and operational expertise to successfully navigate the company through the COVID pandemic, and establish a start-up contact centre that acquired contracts servicing millions of Canadians in the areas of Travel, Rewards, and Healthcare.
Before joining Tour East, Walter worked with WestJet to help drive efficiencies in an 800+ agent contact centre. He also worked with Bell Canada to successfully establish a Caribbean-based offshore contact centre practice that consistently led the company in Customer Satisfaction scores.