If you ever doubt the Kevin Bacon “six degrees of separation” theory, you just need to sit in a packed lobby in the coolest building in our city (known as Nucleus), and get ready to unveil the Health Enterprises Network Family Tree of Health-Related Companies.
The magical intersections are everywhere and as Malcolm Gladwell contends, you realize no one was really, truly self-made, because we all had unique opportunities. In Louisville, the original healthcare pioneers gave us a rewarding and deeply meaningful career path from day one. I stood there knowing it was only possible because of healthcare giants like Wendell Cherry, David Jones, Hank Wagner and so many others.
Our ‘healthcare tree of abundance’ has deep roots to our greatest visionary, Mr. Jones, co-founder of the world-class Humana, who dreamed the company could connect the community and the outside world into a healthcare ecosystem where we would have a hotbed of innovative spin-off organizations.
And Mr. Jones was right, like usual – today, this room is a testimony to that vision. If you just look around and take it in, it will all make sense.
During one of my mentoring sessions when I first moved back to Louisville, Mr. Jones once told me that, to him, it was a great honor to work in healthcare. He said it was so personally rewarding to contribute to a great body of work as he and his team worked closely with management gurus like Peter Drucker to modernize healthcare management systems, develop some of the first universal quality metrics and fund innovators like Dr. DeVries because they were going where no man had been yet.
As we know, healthcare matters to the whole world now more than ever, and it is one of the single most important secular issues that can change a major election, and impact foreign countries’ view of political justice – and a breakthrough can save thousands of lives, all at the same time.
We are truly part of a connected world. This room impacts every part of it.
As the newly-appointed chair of the Health Enterprises Network, I was lucky enough to be one of only a few leaders who got to pull off the sheet and reveal the tree, which has grown to 625 companies and organizations since it was created in 2003. It was a time to reflect and see all that has happened since our humble beginnings.
I am now one of the ‘old guys’ who remember when the healthcare explosion first happened with the advent of DRGs for hospital reimbursement, the creation of the first hospice regulations, the first ventilator program in little Rockcastle, Ky. that helped start Vencor, the booming sub-acute craze, the devastating portrayal of Humana by 60 Minutes, the temporary Columbia Louisville engagement, the founding of the ancillary therapy concept that has created gold-plated jobs, and so on.
My healthcare roots started at the firm Coopers & Lybrand, in the old pits where great leaders like Rich Lechleiter came from, three over desks over from John Reinhart, who led us to the founding of InnovateLTC. And seven work stations over was a young kid named Nick Walker, who now leads my old famed firm (PricewaterhouseCoopers). Along the way, back in 1990, I worked on the audit of a small company that was doing vocational work called ResCare, which became an amazing organization that serves a vital mission while becoming the national pioneer of group homes, where my own brother lives.
My big break came when I met a man named Earl Reed through his brother Eric, who was on his seventh hospital with Bruce Lunsford, who still seems to be undervalued in our healthcare pioneer discussions. During the rise of the LTAC concept, taken nationally by Vencor, I had a chance to partner with a young star named John Thompson, from the recent Merit hospitals success, and Tim Wesley, new president of Elmcroft, who was just around the corner from my old office. I knew two decades ago that both friends would do big things because you could feel it.
I went out one day for a secret meeting to learn what sub-acute was all about, hearing a rising leader named Randy Bufford paint a vision for the future of something bigger that definitely came true before he founded Trilogy. I watched the Vencor development team, at a distance, create what is Atria today during a three-week business planning process, and sat in Earl’s kitchen seeing the early beginnings of what is now Ventas…the best and last piece where we can see the artifacts of something named VEN. At one time, everything I worked on had a VEN in front of it.
Then I moved on to help found a consulting firm called PHS that secured a small family client in South Florida called Home Quality Management, which was struggling. That sent me south for over a decade.
In the end, HQM was sold as a great turnaround success story in late 2007 and Signature HealthCARE was formed out of that transaction with the help of attorney Ben Fultz, along with a great group of West Coast sponsors called ARBA. This helped create our organization, which moved here four years ago so we could be part of today. I even kept a copy of the last tree in my old office in West Palm.
I know I missed so much while I was away and all of you have done great things…big, small, profit or non-profit. Because of all of your great leadership, our tree is full and vibrant with more than 600 companies despite these being the most challenging times ever in healthcare. Thank God we have professional friends, trusted advisors right here, amazing peers and a talent pool like no other to try to flourish and innovate through the third wave of healthcare public policy called cost containment!
We have the best-connected healthcare community anywhere in America and if you don’t believe it, call me. We can review the tree together branch by branch and I will tell you old stories, or come meet my friends at our Healthcare Enterprises Network and get engaged – it will all make sense, finally.
Vision does become reality! It just takes time.
Losing a Great One is Never Easy!
Prior to COVID, I think we all felt like we spent more time with work, work partners and peers than our own families. Was it good or bad? For me, I worked with some of the most talented people in the country, so I loved it. And obviously I love my family too! I had the blessing to work with a friend, brother, Savant, Mensa member, and so much more for nearly a decade and a half – Stephen Stocksdale. To say he was talented with an amazing range is honestly a great understatement in a world full of the opposite. Stephen did so much intellectually, professionally, and personally that for the first three years of working with him, I assumed it “all could not be true”. But time and time again I learned the opposite was true. He served our mission-based organization in every role (field leader, controller, administrator, VP, strategy, consultant, start-ups, etc.) and whatever else we asked of him. Despite having more professional success himself, he just wanted to help us grow in all ways.

One day 5 ½ years ago, Stephen was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and we grieved with him as you would expect. But he was a determined guy and decided to not just learn all he could about cancer, but to master it. He decided there had to be a path he could carve out for himself that no doctor had considered, or he would locate new research that would help him beat it. With a scientific mind and unparalleled IQ, he found a clinical trial he was approved to get in. This trial’s treatment regimen was so potent, and Stephen was the only one that survived. He learned about transfusions, blood structures, and cancer interventions. Cancer kicked his ass often, but he always beat it back up and won again!
We cheered, prayed, and cried often over the past years, but learned three great lessons from Stephen that we all cherish today:
- “Be a Lifelong Learner” because we can always master new things and age is just a number, but lifelong learners never get old. Stephen mastered EMT services, police work, cancer research, hospital administration, heart transplant programs, high level statistical methods, travel, long term care, teaching, and many other degrees, certifications, and accomplishments over 65 years, so let’s all keep Learning and keep growing!
- “Never Give Up” because we grow everyone around us in our struggles and sufferings in ways that impact everyone around us and Stephen knew that and wanted us to get stronger, be more grateful and relearn presence, which we all did! When he came back home, he rarely missed a day at the office and taught all of us new things daily up until the moment he passed last week.
- “GOD IS SO REAL” Stephen had historical expertise on religions, studied theological premises, and had a metaphysical outlook, but in this battle, he felt like he met the Lord and had to share it with all of us. He knew he beat something that is nearly unbeatable, and he wanted time to share his story, his walk, and his private time with the Lord. He watched prayer groups with people he barely knew praying 24/7 that he receives a miracle, and he did receive one that he could share with all of us.

Our organization is going through a very painful time as a mid-size nursing home organization that has stakeholders who worked under unbelievable stress and pressure for so long and had to endure seeing some of our residents pass away. We have lost half of our team, and we are still trying to rebuild stronger and better. I think after serving through the pandemic for 2 ½ years and struggling with how to bring it all back together in this changing workplace and overworked healthcare system, and after suffering so much pulsating unknowns for so long, it was Stephen who gave us the best reason to not look back. He taught us to enjoy the struggle as something that can deepen us all and stay prayerful that God is with us during times like these. We need to rebuild and have new passion as learners, which Stephen demonstrated everyday making our lift just a little easier. And lastly, when you beat cancer four times and die from something else, how could we ever give up? It’s time for us to just “STOCKSDALE IT” and grow by learning, fighting harder and believing in our purpose!


Stephen’s office will remain untouched for now because when he left work on Monday with his ambitious assignments on his wall, we never knew we would not see him again. However, we can certainly feel his presence and we are all better people for his amazing lessons that he taught us until his last hour!