who can help in 8 hours

Background Information

Karen Harmon Abbott is Chief Compliance Officer and Interim Chief Legal Counsel of American Addiction Center (“AAC”). AAC, founded in 2007, is the largest network of rehab facilities nationwide and in 2017 became the first publicly traded addiction treatment provider in the U.S. AAC programs are located in California, Florida, Texas, Nevada, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, use research-based treatments to help clients with drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and mental and behavioral health issues.

Ms. Abbott is an accomplished lawyer who brings a wealth of experience to her position, having been in healthcare for most of her career. Prior to AAC, Karen served as the Sr. Vice President, Senior Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Diversicare Health Services, a publicly traded operator of facilities that provide long term care and skilled nursing rehabilitation care. Prior to that, she was the Chief Administrative Lawyer, Vice President, Associate General Counsel & Assistant Corporate Secretary for twenty years with IASIS Healthcare Corporation (now Steward Health Systems, LLC) where she held progressive legal positions in the company beginning in 1999. She was instrumental in assisting IASIS Healthcare in its acquisition by Steward Health Systems and the successful merger of the two entities, making Steward the largest private hospital operator in the United States. This multi-billion-dollar deal is one of the biggest accomplishments for Ms. Abbott while serving in the field of law.

Ms. Abbott began her professional career in 1987. Prior to becoming a lawyer, she worked as a paralegal while attending law school at night, and over the span of her career, has held a variety of responsible positions covering corporate legal services, human resources, compliance, transactions and healthcare operations. She received her law degree from the Nashville School of Law in 1999. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in sociology from Carson Newman College, Jefferson City, TN. Ms. Abbott, the daughter of a bread truck driver and Tupperware saleswoman, grew up in Athens, Tennessee, an East Tennessee small town settled halfway between Knoxville & Chattanooga, where she graduated from McMinn County High School.

In addition to her many years of legal experience, she has substantial experience and knowledge in advising and directing compliance programs which govern the industry. Karen also has substantial expertise in the areas of corporate and transactional law and brings to her current position a deep history and understanding of the corporate business environment and compliance matters. She is well versed in the nuances of the healthcare industry as well as healthcare law, compliance and ethics. Ms. Abbott’s experience as Chief Administrative Lawyer and the senior legal expert responsible for employment legal matters at IASIS have demonstrated her keen ability to relate to employees as well as understand the needs of management. Ms. Abbott is an excellent resource for all management levels including investigations and training, with an extensive understanding of healthcare regulatory, compliance and ethics matters within healthcare organizations at both public and private companies. Therefore, she brings to her new position a deep history and understanding of the corporate business environment and compliance matters along with a clear view of where we should direct our compliance efforts moving forward.

Karen has served on several volunteer boards over the years, including All About Women, a Middle Tennessee non-profit organization that connects women with free, engaging resources to balance their lives and improve their health and assists in linking women with information and services to address their total well-being beyond just their healthcare needs including fitness and nutrition, mental health, education and career services, legal and financial issues and Nashville Christian School, a private K-12, college preparatory school located in West Nashville. She has been married to her husband Hal, Sr. for 27 years and they have three children. She enjoys spending time with her children, cooking reading and being outdoors.

Interview manuscript

Hello, my name is Karen Abbott, and I am chief compliance officer in general counsel at American Addiction Centers here in Brentwood, Tennessee. American Addiction Centers is a small public company and our mission is to help people with addiction to alcohol and drugs find the right treatment for them to be successful in life. We have several rehab facilities throughout the country, and we specialize in addiction treatment and dual diagnosis. Prior to that I was with a company called Aegis Healthcare Corporation for about twenty years where I was chief administrative lawyer. That company was a three-billion-dollar hospital company, we managed and owned hospitals, and we were bought by Stuart Healthcare out of Boston which relocated that firm to Dallas, and it is now the largest private hospital company in the country. So, I’m ready for any questions you all may have.

Thank you so much, first of all, for allowing us to interview you, it’s a real privilege. first, I’d like to ask you some more questions about your background. What drew you to working for American Addiction Centers?

So actually, what drew me to work for them was a team I worked with before at Aegis. The culture at Aegis was significant, in terms of significantly wonderful. We were very collegiate, the synergy there was amazing, and it was a sad day when we decided that we were going to have to break up the band. A lot of people went their different ways, some people relocated to Dallas. We had all worked together a long time. The turnover there was pretty low, and so we had a lot of long-term employees. We had built trust among ourselves, so it was very difficult for a lot of people when Aegis was sold. I always loved being a lawyer, but what I excelled in at Aegis was Compliance, and I had helped build that program there into a very robust compliance program by giving legal advice. I was advising our chief compliance officer, and then I also loved doing employment. That’s not all I did there, but those were the things I loved, and so after twenty years I actually had an opportunity to ask myself “what is it you really are good at and what is it that you really want to do that’s more than just a paycheck?” I chose compliance, and I had a friend who really pushed me to get myself out there. I finished my job at Aegis on June 28th and started at a company called Diversicare the very next Monday. I worked there for six months, and quite frankly, it was not a good fit, I was not happy. Nothing against that company, it’s a wonderful company, but it wasn’t good for me. And as it turned out, Aegis needed a new chief compliance officer. A colleague, who is now the general counsel here, recruited me to come over and work here. I did a lot of research on Aegis, and I loved their mission. It is a for-profit company, but just because you’re for-profit doesn’t mean you aren’t doing work that changes peoples’ lives, and I needed to be doing something where I felt like I was making a difference.

What is this something you could have imagined yourself doing twenty years ago?

Let’s go back to when I was your age. When I was out of college and got my first job as a paralegal, I could not imagine being a lawyer. I didn’t have the dream to be a lawyer. I was a hard worker, I was driven, but I did not see myself as a lawyer. Twenty years ago, no way.

Most of us are soon to be college graduates, what is some advice that you wished someone would’ve told you when you were starting your post-college life?

“Relax. Be yourself.” No kidding, I know that sounds like cliché thing to say. You do not have to know what you want to do today, and it might change, you don;’t have to decide your life path at twenty two. Find something you enjoy, work hard at it. If the money doesn’t come, find a way to rearrange things so that you can still do what you love and the money will come. There’s too much looking what peers are coming out of college making. Someone’s making a hundred thousand dollars over here, someone’s making seventy thousand over there, that might be great for them but you might hate that job. Don’t be afraid to try something because you’re afraid you won’t like it. Being yourself is always going to make a good interview, and be cognizant of who you’re being interviewed by. If you’re going to corporate, big time America, you’re going to present yourself differently. How you look matters, people do think about that, but if you do make a mistake in your interview, just laugh at yourself, go ahead and laugh in front of them.

I’m going to move on to some questions about planning and your planning process. What are some examples of some short-term goals that you are dealing with Right now fir American Addiction Centers?

One thing we’re trying to accomplish is to find a way to get more admissions. We have set goals of a certain number of admissions per week. That’s actually a short-term goal that turned into a long-term goal. For me personally, I need hard quantitative auditing and training. One of my short-term goals is to get everyone trained properly so that they can identify issues that provide certain opportunities. There’s a couple more right now; one is more revenue driven and the other is more compliance driven.

It sounds like the company’s mission is particularly important in your planning process. Would you say that that’s a fair assessment?

Absolutely, it is. Our mission is to find ways to give hope to people so they can understand that they can be healed from the awful disease of addiction. So yes, the mission is extremely important to me. It’s all about hope and healing.

What is American Addiction Centers’ System for finding people who need treatment and how do you get that treatment to them? In other words, how do you find people to serve?

We do that in a lot of different ways. Part of our business, a big part of our business, in fact, is business development as a call center. People, at the end of their ropes, will search for alcohol treatment or alcohol rehab online. By doing that, people will find us via our website. That a whole thing in and of itself, we have a team that specifically researches who are the people that interact with our website, and how they interact with it, day in and day out. People will click on our website, find a number, and make a call into our call center where they will communicate with trained individuals who know how to guide them into the process of recovery. It’s a different kind of call center because you’re talking with people who are trying to get treatment and sometimes they are not sure as to what that entails or how to going about getting it. Maybe they’re apprehensive. To keep people from backing out, we follow them through the whole process. Because we have treatment centers all over the country, we want to place them at the best center for them. Maybe they want equine therapy. Maybe they care more about being at the beach and would benefit from our facility in Laguna, California. If we can’t provide their needs, because there are always people whose needs we won’t be able to meet for various reasons, we try to guide them to right center for them. So naturally, we want them to come to our centers first, but we also have an obligation to help individuals find help outside of our centers, we take that very seriously. Also, when it comes to planning, we begin our strategic planning in July for every one of our centers. We use everybody in every department and facility to put together a budget that has to be submitted to our executive management team, which often need to be formally presented. At this point in the year, we’re already thinking about our strategies for next year. We also need to be cognizant of how the insurance companies are going to pay for treatment. Also, who are the payers, what are they willing to pay for, and what are our contracts with those payers? We’ve got to forecast that for the future in some way that’s accurate.

What is your planning process like at the beginning of the work week is that typically daily, weekly or, monthly?

At the beginning of the week you typically start planning for the next week, and you kind of live and die by that system. But you must be prepared to schedule in the last-minute emergencies, by offering yourself enough wiggle room in order to not become overwhelmed or crammed for time. If you fill out your day to the limits, you need to trust your staff to be able to take that call or be able to reschedule for you. But never wait for your deadline due to the nature of my workplace which almost guarantees some sort of delay or surprise. If I have due date, I just begin working on it the day I’m presented the due date in order to have that ready by my deadline where I’ll try to get at least 90% of it ready before the day before its due so I don’t need to stay up all night, while also making it doable regardless if some sort of emergency hits.

When it comes to motivating your employees have there ever been any problems with that or have you ever had to motivate your employees to work harder?

Yes, I can tell you that people are motivated by different things. you must figure out that sometimes it takes you a minute, where it's my job to know what it takes to motivate my employees. One who is clearly motivated by money, one that is motivated by her own feeling of accomplishment not only it's important to her but to me and the rest of the team and people involved, another employee is motivated by learning and achieving new information and checking things off his list. I even have one employee who wants a lot of attention pats on the back and encouragement. But I also have employee that's just a blob and just needs to be left alone. If you work with them in thier realm of motivation and they still aren’t performing, then you are going to have to hit them over the head with a performance plan. You have to tell them I know this might be out of your comfort zone, but you must do this a certain way. Because at the end of the day you have a boss, I have a boss, and the CEO of the company has a boss. Where everyone is expecting a certain result, and it's are job as a team to get to that result. Even if you don’t like you have to do it and where my position in the company is I must be the one to do it and that need for results motivates me personally.

Would you say someone motivating by the money vs someone who is more motivated by their work. Do you believe that different motivations lead to better or worse employee performance?

Usually the person who is motivated by money is not going to do as well financially as the person who is just trying to be there best and be as helpful as possible is always going to move up. I have a girl working for me right now who is so motivated through doing her best and helping and looking out for me I could not function at the level I do without her which makes her irreplaceable to me. Whereas the more finically driven of my employees is less likely to be my right-hand person because maybe she doesn’t want to be my right hand, she's a hard worker but maybe she doesn’t want the extra responsibility. She wants to come in work hard do her job and get paid for it. Which is completely ok because they will always come to work in order to make their financial goals.

Do you ever have to consult your employees for suggestions before making big decisions?

All the time. Every big decision. Because I sit here in my office and I can think this is some great idea but because I'm not the person physically doing it. I need to consult with them to see how my idea would affect their job. Because it could sound great and magical but, it could be inefficient and not work out at all how we intend it to. Plus, I have people on my team who have a lot more knowledge about things that I oversee them for that they do every single day that I would have no idea what that is they are doing. So, it would be silly for me to decide without their input do to my not having a as deep of knowledge as they do on their area.

Can you walk me through little bit of just a basic chain of commands for American Addiction Center?

So I am Chief Compliance officer I report to CEO also to Board of Directors. So that is very important there is some subservient independent virtue for Chef Compliance officer. Meanwhile for my senior counsel and general counsel job I also report to CEO. The CFO reports to CEO and the Vice President of Human resources department also reports to the CEO. Also, our Executive Vice President of Marketing does reports to CEO. For my position I have ABP, director, manager, and another staff member who reports to me. So, I do not require them to follow an order when reporting to me from one position other. It does not work well when there is a lot of sectors of hierarchy. So, I like to keep it pretty flat. I may have someone help me manage a staff member, at the end of the day it’s flat for me. Job title are when it comes to getting your next job, but they are not important to me. Sometime within an organization job title will provides you with additional PTO or extra bonus. so, titles are important when it comes to money, but I am not going treat my staff members differently based on their job title. Whether it’s an upper level manager or lower lever manager or anyone that is inside an organization is equally important. It also important that you have a loyal and honest team member. When hiring new people, I only have two rules one is loyalty to each other and other is no drama in workplace. Also, if you do problem with each other in your team, you need to keep that within your department it makes everyone’s job easier. Unless that problem is out of your hand and that’s when you report to higher management or myself and we will try to work it out.

What are some qualities that you think would make a person a good leader in managerial position?

I happen to believe in servant leadership model which means I am not too good to make my own copies because it might not be an efficient to make my own copies. I always been able to help other people see that I am not above them and I don’t feel like I am above them, which I think it’s a good leadership quality. Also, I believe that a good leader should trust the people that they are working with which I am not a micromanager. So, I know what kind of people I like to lead, I don’t like to lead someone who has to have me looking on shoulder to shoulder. Sometimes I say that If you are somebody that can’t come to time and leave on time without somebody checking on you than this is not a place for you.

Is everybody who is working for you is on the same page think they are doing really meaningful work? If not, then how do you work with that person?

I certainly dealt with someone who does not want to get on board with me. First of all, I do not believe in annual personal evaluation because I am pretty direct and kind. I always have guide and mentor people so for the most part direct and I usually try to say look you are not in trouble for this so don’t do it like this the next time. So, there is no surprise when I have to call them and write them up because I have already told three time the same thing. I meet staff daily to manage and if they can’t get on board, sometimes it’s not a personal and they have to move on some where they can be successful, and I need to find somebody that is more productive on my team.

How much autonomy do you allow your team to operate with?

So, I am not a micromanager, but I do hold them accountable, so I am not going to look under shoulder. I expect them to know what to bring to me when there is a problem and I expect them to be professional. I expect the one at new entry level or new to job person to ask me a lot of question and inform. But if you are talking about my staff now than I don’t know what time they got here this morning and what they are leaving. I just know they are there when I need them, and they get me what I needed immediately, and they have a lot of enthusiasm thankfully which is nice.

Has it even been difficult getting your team to accept a new idea or any changes to key function in company?

Sure, maybe not here today well there have been a lots of changes and thing about it is that you can sit around and complain about it how much you don’t like the change, but it is not going to stop change so you might as well go ahead and make the jump and move on. The only person that is not happy is that you the complainer.

How are the standards in you company is established?

So, that is going to be a more like policy driven for the most part. In most good organization they will start with good set of policy about how we do business and how we expect people perform. The most important thing for me is the commutate of policy and expectations. So we do that with job description and it’s always key for you all to understand what’s your job description is, but you can never ever say that it not in job description. My job description is whatever that CEO ask me to do today.

To what extent would you say that behavior and attitude are monitored, and how much your company mission factor into behavior and attitude?

For me behavior and attitude are extremely important, behavior and attitude are more important to me that how well you can do your job. I can generally teach you how to do the job, but I cannot improve your attitude and I cannot force you to behave on a way that is acceptable. So, that sort of factors into our whole vision here, we cannot force someone that is suffering from addiction to go into treatment. So, because I am phycology major, I am a reader of people, so I pay attention to what people are doing. If they are rolling their eyes and if their body language turns away, I really pick up on those things. When I am doing training or even there is a hundred people in the room I can identify and know the difficult employee based on their behavior and attitude they are projecting. My company right now are going through financial problem and over and over I get thanks for having a positive attitude. I think leader as our job to be honest and transparent, but also to be positive about it.

Is there anything you do to help deal with your stress caused from being in a management position that you either do at home or at work? Or advice you’d give to us or an employee on how to deal with their stress?

First, you must really pay attention to how you are feeling. I'm a huge supporter for self-care when you can tell you need a day off or just a mental break you need to take it, and with your generation your bosses are going to understand that it more instead of my generation where it was if you’re sick toughen up and get over it.

Self-care is all about finding something that helps take the pressure off, at the first moment you get free time. For me that’s reading, travelling, or just finding somewhere quiet to relax. But it's all about your own personal care and it won’t always be answered by taking a day off, you must find your own way to relieve that stress.

What we learned

Planning:

Karen Abbott is the Chief compliance officer of American Addiction Centers. Her planning process revolves around the company's short- and long-term goal of gaining admissions for their rehab program. Which was neat about this is that originally admissions number when she first took the job admissions numbers were only viewed as a short-term goal but have since evolved into being integrated as long term goals within the company. She likes using this method to track thier effectiveness through it being quantitatively measurable which makes it easier to see progress made toward achieving that goal.

Due to the hectic nature of her profession she’s a strong advocate for scheduling a week in advance and even saying you live and die by scheduling out. But you can never over book yourself because of the additional stress it will cause and likeliness a emergency. She also recommends getting 90% of a project done prior to the day before its due for submittal to make it at least doable to night grind it if you happen to get super slammed that day instead of staying up all night and not doing your best work. These are the most important aspects of management because if you can’t manage your schedules you aren’t going to meet deadlines which will result in dismissal.

Planning in their company also is used at a very humane level when it comes to those seeking addiction help. Once someone contacts them about treatment, they walk them through the process and will even ask what kind of situation or environment would best suit their personality to their greatest benefit examples like; equine therapy or even being near a beach, have proven to help motivate people through their rehab. This along with yearly financial planning that takes place in July each year helps the company budget out plans the treatment of patients and how negotiate out contracts with insurance companies ahead of time in order to give the most timely and effective care.

Leading:

There are several factors and importance of we learned about leading. The first thing we learned is that it takes lots of courage to lead other people. If you are not a people friendly person than leading other people might be difficult for you. While leading others there will be some people who might not always agree with your idea or your leadership quality, so you also need an ability to convince people. Another thing leader need is a strength to listen to people of long period of time and make them feel like you are interested on them. Leaders also needs to have an ability to figure out small detail, which they need to be detail oriented person. The reason leaders need this ability is that when they lead people it’s easier for leaders to find out what makes other people interested doing task and use that to motivate them.

During an interview and in the class, we learned that people are motivated by different reasons. Some people are motivated with money, some are motivated with a personal growth and accomplishment, and others are motivated by learning new things and achieving new information. It’s leader’s responsibility to find out who motivates with what and use that get best out of them. According to Mrs. Abbott we also learned that those who are motivated with their own feeling of accomplishment is an asset to the organization, then those that are motivated with money. Those people that are motivated with accomplishment are more valuable to organization because they are more committed in job. They also do the job in an effective way as possible, so their contribution is important in achieving a goal of an organization, and those who are motivated with money usually do not perform very well.

We learned that it’s also important that leaders to be involve in a building relationship with people. As a leader when you build the relationships with people, they feel more connected with you, and they are more likely to share their thoughts and feelings with you. Relationships are hard to build, so in order to make strong relationship as a leader you need to show respect to people around you. In general, leader should always respect people’s ideas and perspectives even if you do not agree with them. Also, leader should always try to live the life of a person they are trying to motivate. By doing that you get the idea of how they think and handle the task, so it’s easier for you to connect with them.

Finally, we learned that leader and different from managers. Many times, manager is focus on productivity and achieving the goals. They are more concerns with productivity and people employees around them. However, leaders are more concern about people than daily productivity. Leader do contribute to an organization’s goals but tend to think in a long term. Leaders know that without people, it’s difficult to finish the job. So, leader connect with people, inspire and motivate them to finish the long-term goals. Which it takes lots of skills and courage to be in a leadership position.

Organizing:

From the interview with Mrs. Abbott, we learned that as chief compliance officer, she primarily oversees and manages regulatory and policies issues, and in doing so, she exercises all four types of control. By keeping American Addiction Center in line with national regulations, she is engaged in quality control, while part of her job also contains an element of human resource management, because she explained that evaluation and appraisal of her employees’ performance is an integral part of her job.

Furthermore, she also revealed in the interview that she plays a role in the control of both information and financial resources. Being a manager at a call center, Mrs. Abbott must be well versed in marketing forecast and environmental analysis. She additionally is involved with American Addiction Center’s control of capital, as she explained that she is involved with planning of how to allocate funds that goes well into next year.

We learned from Mrs. Abbott that measuring employee satisfaction and dedication to the job is vital, particularly in a company like American Addiction Center, whose mission is largely responsible for a sense of team unity. Over the course of the interview, Mrs. Abbott explained that an important facet of her job is distinguishing between employees who are motivating by the reward of the word itself and those motivated by money. Ironically, Mrs. Abbott made that claim that employees that are motivated by money tend to not make as much money as those who are motivated by altruism.

As determined from the interview, concertive control is important at American Addiction Center, being a company whose employees share values and beliefs that accompany meaningful work. Employees at a company like this feel a sense of accomplishment from their work, which contributes to the healthy workplace culture.