Adoption, Adversity, and Advocacy: Cheryl Lovell’s Personal and Professional Journey

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Cheryl Lovell, COO of Constellation Health Services. They are a family centered organization that offers a range of health services, including community based home health, palliative care, hospice, and much more.

Cheryl is also CEO of CLC Group, which specializes in business consulting, focusing on healthcare, leadership mentoring, and operational efficiencies. They offer products and services designed to improve operations and finance in businesses, especially in the healthcare sector. Her background includes CEO positions at Charter Healthcare and Southland Home Health, highlighting her deep experience in healthcare leadership and business development.

She holds an MBA from Merrill-Hirsch University and a BA from Webster University, which have supported her focus on boosting organizational growth and innovation. Her commitment to improving healthcare operations has earned her recognition for guiding teams through change and creating efficient systems. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both

great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications. And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money in your employees’ pockets and the company’s too. One recent client was able to increase their net profits by $900 per employee per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, CEO of Constellation Health Services, Sherilyn LeValle. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Cheryl Lovell (02:07)
Thank you.

Anthony Codispoti (02:09)
So Cheryl, you’ve led several healthcare organizations before, and actually I think I just messed up your title there in the second mention, didn’t I? It’s not CEO at Constellation, it’s COO at Constellation. So before ⁓ joining Constellation Health Services and becoming the COO, I’m curious to talk a little bit more about your background first. What first drew you into healthcare leadership?

Cheryl Lovell (02:17)
Yeah, it’s COO, Yes, correct.

So I think it’s a pretty fun, a little bit interesting story. I was in the Navy, I was in the Gulf War. During the Gulf War, we had lots of training in emergency, trauma, ER, all that kind of thing. And when I got out of the Navy, my goal was to go to nursing school. And…

I started nursing school in the early 90s in Oregon. My husband was still in the military and we were getting transferred around. In early 90s, nursing schools would not transfer you wherever you wanted to go. It was like they thought there was gonna be too many nurses. It was a really weird time. And Webster University is the…

a university that supports military members and their families. So they are on most military installations travel with the military. And one of the advisors said, look, we have this new degree in healthcare administration. You should go for that because it’s going to be the wave of the future, blah, blah, blah. There’s going to be so many nurses, yada, yada, yada. So I ended up doing my degree with Merrill with Webster, getting my degree in healthcare administration.

and not finishing nursing school. So that sort of propelled me into healthcare leadership. I started out in healthcare after the military as a CNA, worked my way up into operations, office management, those kinds of things. But I’ve kind of done every job in the post-acute setting from caregiver to scheduling to office manager to administrator to leader, and just worked my way up through.

the ranks because I ended up not being a clinician due to the whole weird nursing industry at the time. So that’s how I ended up in healthcare leadership, sorted by default, not as a nurse, but as someone who understood the operations of the business.

Anthony Codispoti (04:30)
Now it’s probably hard to answer this with any definitive, but in definitiveness, but I wonder, is there a part of you that wishes that you had gone the nursing route or do you feel pretty comfortable in the role of administration?

Cheryl Lovell (04:43)
There’s part of me that always wishes I would have done it. However, what I can say, and I’ve said this many times in my career, is that many of my friends and colleagues who went into home health and hospice and to that post-acute visiting world were clinicians themselves. And what I found is they solve their own problems by being the nurse in the field doing the care, and that limited their ability to grow and manage their business.

And I always had to find a solution because I couldn’t be the solution to my own problem. So it forced me to grow my businesses differently with loyal employees and how to manage things that I couldn’t just control myself. Because if I was a nurse and I couldn’t find someone to do it, the easy answer would have been go out and do it myself. And I think I grew faster, learned more, and was a better business person because I couldn’t solve my own problem.

Anthony Codispoti (05:18)
interesting.

So give an example of how one of your peers, you know, who was a nurse would have been able to go on site and what the solution was that you had to find as an alternative.

Cheryl Lovell (05:52)
I had to find employees that were willing to walk with me. I had to find the clinical team and develop them as employees that would walk alongside me, would be as hungry as I was during startup phases of businesses, things like that. So I think that when you, it taught me how to build teams earlier, quicker, faster, and really just get people to.

you know, buy into your vision and what you’re doing, whereas if I didn’t do that and I went and did it myself, I may not have developed the same relationships with my employees and helped them be as hungry as I was and as motivated.

Anthony Codispoti (06:33)
What were some things that helped you kind of develop those skills? mean, other than just sort of being forced to like in the moment, were there mentors that kind of coached you, some courses or books or how did you get there?

Cheryl Lovell (06:46)
I think one of my best mentors was very early on in my career, right after I got out of this military, one of my first jobs in an office, I was first a scheduler. And then I became the branch manager that was with Kelly assisted living way back in the day, Betty McNamara, I’ll never forget her. She was my boss, solid nurse, whatever. And ⁓ she called me one day and she’s like, Look, you just really can’t tell people what to do. You have to like ask them.

Like you’re not in the military anymore. You have to like, you know, find a way to ask them to do their jobs. You can’t just tell them to go do their job because they’re not taking it very well. And I was like, but we’re paying them to do their job. don’t understand. Like, I don’t get this. And she’s like, I’m just saying you got to find a different way. Like this is not going to work for you long-term. So you really need to understand how to captivate your employees in a different way by getting them to do what you want by asking in a different way and whatever. And

Anthony Codispoti (07:25)
You

Cheryl Lovell (07:45)
maybe six months later or something like that, she called me, she goes, you know, you’re the only person I’ve ever had to give like hard leadership advice to that listened to what I told them and really, you know, grew. And I don’t even know where Betty is anymore. I don’t even know if she’s with us anymore. But if she is and she listens to this podcast, she was a huge impact on my transition from military into real world leadership and management. So she really helped me understand that.

Anthony Codispoti (07:53)
Wow.

Cheryl Lovell (08:13)
how to ask people and get them to do what you need them to do in a different way.

Anthony Codispoti (08:18)
So she brought it to your attention, like hey Cheryl, you need a different approach here. How did you actually figure out that approach?

Cheryl Lovell (08:27)
God, it’s been so long, I don’t remember. think I just had to work at it. And I think I was so surprised. can’t believe, like, I just remember telling myself over and over, I really have to ask people who we are paying to do a job, to do their job. I don’t understand. But, know, eventually, maybe I asked her, maybe we did coaching. I don’t really remember, but I know that I had to work really hard at it.

Anthony Codispoti (08:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And which which ⁓ company was this with?

Cheryl Lovell (08:53)
That was with Kelly Assisted Living back in the day. They got bought out by Rescare years ago or whatever, but it was the old Kelly Girl Company. They were a private duty home care company. And so was my really big entry into leadership.

Anthony Codispoti (08:57)
Okay. ⁓

And ⁓ prior to Constellation, which we’re going to get to in a moment, you held CEO roles at Charter Health Care and Southland Home Health. Can you think about ⁓ maybe a big obstacle there that you faced and how you were able to overcome it? OK.

Cheryl Lovell (09:16)
Hmm.

I think charter was the hardest we were.

I was brought in as the turnaround CEO for a company that had ⁓ been in some serious trouble financially. And I think it was a ⁓ it was just a situation that nobody knew that it was as bad as it was until we really dug in a little bit differently and different, you know, different eyes looking on something bring sheds light where maybe there wasn’t light before.

And when we thought was probably maybe a $10 or $15 million turnaround turned out to be double or triple that type of turnaround. And it was really significantly impactful on the organization. And we just couldn’t get out from under the hurdles of it. So that was a super challenging thing. We were so close, but we just couldn’t get it over the hurdle.

Anthony Codispoti (09:57)
Wow.

So eventually it did have to fold.

Cheryl Lovell (10:16)
Yeah, it did.

Anthony Codispoti (10:17)
What was that like? mean, you were brought in to make the turnaround and for reasons outside your control just weren’t able to pull that off.

Cheryl Lovell (10:20)
It was horrible.

It was really, I mean, I think sometimes you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes. But it was really hard. It was hard because we had such great employees. We had such a great leadership team. ⁓ There was just so much going for us, but we just didn’t have enough resources, cash or, you know, whatever. Like I always said, if I could have been in there a couple of years before.

it would have been so different, but I literally was the last 18 months of the business and we just couldn’t get it over the hump. Myself and Anagene O’Neill, who just started her own with a venture capital company, Cross Bridges, like we were a, it was just a dream team and she’s going to do amazing things in her new role, a new world, but we, ⁓

We just couldn’t get it over the hump and we really, really tried. We did everything that we could, but we worked our tails off as a leadership team and there were so many amazing people working hard with us and they knew how devastating it was for us to have to shutter it down.

Anthony Codispoti (11:31)
You say that you learn more from your failures. What do you think you learned through that experience?

Cheryl Lovell (11:37)
I think I learned ⁓ how to pull together a dream team pretty quickly and knowing that I built significant enough relationships in my career that I could pull people onto that team. And I think Anna Jean learned the same thing. We pulled the best of our best right alongside of us ⁓ that we had worked with in the past or that we had known.

⁓ We pulled a dream team together like in record speed, I think within like 60 days maybe from the time that we sort of took over until and they hung in there through the good, the bad, the struggles, through the whole thing as we were trying to turn things around, make better decisions. I we had to make a lot of changes, a lot of hard choices through the whole ⁓ experience and our leadership team was all the way till the end.

Anthony Codispoti (12:30)
What got you through it on a personal level? What did you lean on? What did you go to for support?

Cheryl Lovell (12:36)
I think we leaned on each other. Our leadership team was so tight, we leaned on each other. We had calls, we met on a regular basis in person. ⁓ So, and that was hard because we were all over the country, but we made those things happen and we really supported each other. I think all of us had our family support and that kind of thing we did. So that was helpful, but we really were there for each other.

Anthony Codispoti (13:02)
Yeah. So how did the opportunity to join Constellation come about?

Cheryl Lovell (13:08)
Oddly enough, a recruiter that I had worked with in the past had called me up while we were in the final quarter of Charter’s existence and said, hey, I want you to meet this guy, the owner of Consolation. He’s trying to do some different things, blah, blah, blah. I think you guys would hit it off. And he introduced us. And literally a week later, there was an opportunity for him to

potentially put an offer on some of the charter assets that were maybe being divested. And so our relationship grew really quickly in a really short amount of time. ⁓ based on building that relationship, asked me to join Constellation with him and help him grow the operations. And I think we’ve done five De Novos in the last year. New startups from scratch.

Anthony Codispoti (14:01)
What is that?

Say more about that. What are these startups doing?

Cheryl Lovell (14:08)
So they’re all hospice startups. So it’s five operations that we started up either with ourselves or with joint ventures across our organization to really build the footprint of Consolation on the East. So we’re basically Texas and East.

Anthony Codispoti (14:24)
So where is the company itself based?

Cheryl Lovell (14:27)
The company’s headquarters are in New York. ⁓ So that’s where they started. Our main home health and hospice offices in Connecticut, but their ⁓ corporate offices are Connecticut and New York. And so we’re mostly an East Coast team and that’s where the family that owns Constellation is from, the New York area.

Anthony Codispoti (14:46)
And is this

all in home care?

Cheryl Lovell (14:50)
It’s all hospice, home health, palliative care. It’s all in-home care, yes.

Anthony Codispoti (14:56)
Is the hospice, so it’s always in home even if it’s hospice, is that hospice service ever provided, you know, some sort of a senior care facility or a.

Cheryl Lovell (14:59)
Mm-hmm.

It can

be if it’s a particular level of hospice care. It’s called general inpatient care, which can be done at a hospital, a skilled facility or whatever, but that’s when a patient is experiencing significant pain and symptom management that requires some 24-hour nursing care.

Anthony Codispoti (15:20)
Okay, so say more about the specifics of the home care services that you provide.

Cheryl Lovell (15:26)
So we provide home health in a couple of states, New York and Connecticut. ⁓ And then we provide hospice services in the rest of our locations across the Eastern seaboard from Texas East. And we provide palliative care services in most of those areas. And we’re really focused on a true palliative model, which is really a Part B physician.

practice type of model where the patient is getting independent pain and symptom management on palliative care programs.

Anthony Codispoti (15:56)
What does that say more about that? What does that mean exactly?

Cheryl Lovell (15:59)
Well, palliative care is really ⁓ support for anyone who has chronic diseases, multiple chronic diseases, and eventually one of those chronic diseases is going to be what takes their life, whether it’s COPD, diabetes, something like that. But it’s senior patients who have multiple comorbidities, which is the majority of the country managing multiple medications. And one of those things continues to

impact them in a negative way. They can’t get their COPD under control. They can’t get their diabetes, whatever it is that’s really chronically impacting their health in a very negative way. A palliative care provider can help work with their primary care physician as a consultative service to help manage some of those symptoms that may be more difficult, that are not maybe in the wheelhouse of the primary or the patient is seeing a cardiologist, a urologist, a nephrologist, all of the different ologists, right?

And it really kind of helps coordinate that big picture. So everybody’s on the same page trajectory. So it really can bring that family member, the patient and the family member a little bit more continuity of care and consistency in that approach and where they maybe don’t want continuing aggressive treatment or how do they have conversations about not, you know, doing extra more things, really just managing their end of life in the best way that they can.

Anthony Codispoti (17:26)
Now I’ve talked with a number of home healthcare services and a lot of them use a franchise model. Is that what you’re employing as well?

Cheryl Lovell (17:33)
No, we are a family-owned company, so it is family-owned and operated.

Anthony Codispoti (17:38)
Okay. What else sets you apart from some of the other home health services out there?

Cheryl Lovell (17:44)
I think what really sets us apart is the, listen, I say this all the time. We are required by Medicare, we’re required by the government to all provide the same services. you have to have a social worker, you have to have a chaplain, you have to have a nurse, you have to have an aide, you have to have all these things that are government required, right? But.

What sets you apart is your people and how you treat your people and how your people treat the people you’re treating, right? Like that’s the one thing that can set you apart. Everybody can have this specialty program, that specialty program. We’re all required to do the exact same things, but what sets you apart is the people who are delivering the care and how you’re treating the people who are delivering the care and they are what make you look good.

Anthony Codispoti (18:33)
Let’s talk more about the people because, you know, it’s a tight labor market, right? It’s hard to find good folks, hard to hold on to good folks. Shar, what are some things that you’ve tried and found success with when it comes to recruiting and retention?

Cheryl Lovell (18:50)
I think we’re all always still trying like you think you got it and you don’t and you know, I think the world has changed a lot in recruiting and retention. I think people since COVID have a very different mindset. ⁓ So really people have no desire to have I feel like longevity is not something that is really exists much anymore. Right? I think it’s ⁓

You got to try to create the culture and still have expectations and really be able to hold people accountable. people have changed. It’s a little more fickle. They don’t, I’ve never experienced in my career as many people who will just walk off jobs now. They don’t have any care, loyalty, anything. And so if they come in and there may be nothing that you can do to ingrain them in your culture that will get them, if they don’t want to be there,

they just will walk off the job. And that’s a whole new struggle that we’re dealing with. There’s not a lot of times people are giving notice anymore. They’re just like, I’m done, I’m out. Now in the professional world, some of the clinicians have to give notice because it’s their license, you those kinds of things. But it is a really interesting dynamic and you just do the best you can. We have programs, we have employee recognition. We have several things that we try to employ. I don’t think there’s a magic bullet for anything. I think you just got to do the best you can.

You have to be consistent and you have to try to create a positive environment for people who, for the majority of people who want to show up every day. You’re not going to hit them all.

Anthony Codispoti (20:28)
So I heard a lot of this, especially during COVID, where it’s like people don’t want to work. ⁓ You know, we’re begging, we’re bribing, we, you know, we can’t get them to come in. ⁓ And I hear from a lot of folks that that has not changed a whole lot. ⁓ Maybe some people are coming back to work, right? The government funds have kind of run out and they need the job. But it sounds like you’re still dealing with kind of a strange environment where people don’t have sort of that

Cheryl Lovell (20:45)
⁓

you

Anthony Codispoti (20:58)
level of commitment or responsibility that they use too.

Cheryl Lovell (21:02)
Yeah, I think it’s just different. Like there are definitely people who are not like that. But there’s definitely a part of the population where they don’t make it through orientation. They agree to do a job and then they are like, no, I’m not doing like, it’s just really interesting the dynamic and it is very different than prior to COVID.

Anthony Codispoti (21:22)
Hmm. Let’s talk about ⁓ CLC group. This is your ⁓ consulting service company where you guys focus on operational efficiencies and financial improvements for healthcare companies can to help us and our listeners kind of understand more specifically what you do. Maybe can you share a recent example of an innovative approach that you introduced to help a client overcome a big operational challenge?

Cheryl Lovell (21:29)
Mm-hmm.

I think, ⁓ you know, an outside perspective is always helpful when you’re a business is struggling with something. Someone who’s not in the day to day can see ⁓ a different picture through the window, right? So even if you don’t necessarily have a lot of money to bring in consultants, just to have someone ⁓ to look through your window and say, you know what,

I bet if you move this chair over to there, things are going to change a lot, right? Or if you, if you just do this little tweak where people, when you’re in it every day, you can’t see it. So sometimes I have the beauty and my team at CLC, I have a few people who work with me, have the ability to look in the window and go, you know what? I think that’s blocking your flow of traffic. Or I think that’s impacting your ability to get things done. Or I see it from this way. What do you think?

and just pointing out things and getting people to come along with saying, my God, you’re right. Like, I didn’t see that for sure. You know, that kind of thing.

Anthony Codispoti (22:59)
So an example might be like traffic flow through a waiting area and it’s like, hey, let’s.

Cheryl Lovell (23:05)
It could

be as simple as like, ⁓ just any workflow thing. Like I answer the phone and this is how I process my intake through getting a patient onto service. And if you just tweak this one workflow in your process, you would save labor, save time, save whatever, and that changes everything. Or just even looking at

you know, what geography your clinicians are in and how you’re doing it and why someone’s doing it a particular way because they’ve always done it that way. And if you just change one dynamic, you can change productivity. in health care, your most expensive cost is labor, right? If you can manage your labor efficiently, you make a better margin. And it’s really hard to do because people are people, right? So how do you help

leaders and companies really effectively manage that most expensive part of their business, which is their labor.

Anthony Codispoti (24:08)
Without mentioning names, can you think of a particular client scenario where you pulled this lever or turned that dial and here was the situation before and here was the situation after?

Cheryl Lovell (24:20)
Yeah, so I had a client ⁓ that I worked with a few years ago and really they ⁓ processed their paperwork in such an archaic way and they scheduled their labor in an archaic way and we just changed how they scheduled and how they did their paperwork and they were able to go from losing, you know, maybe 8 million to losing 4 million to I think they’re at the point where they’re now

close to break even for the first time just in keeping those processes enacted.

Anthony Codispoti (24:56)
just by changing how they schedule folks. meaning that the…

Cheryl Lovell (24:58)
just by changing

how they did their paperwork and how they scheduled folks,

Anthony Codispoti (25:02)
And so that they didn’t have as too many people working a shift where it was unnecessary.

Cheryl Lovell (25:08)
Well, think about ⁓ in the field, there’s not a shift. It’s like how many people that you can see on an everyday basis and what kind of caseload can you handle? So there isn’t anybody coming into a building. They’re all trying to manage a certain number of patients. Where do they manage them? How do they manage them? How do they get from one place to the other? Because the biggest part of our industry is limiting windshield time, right? Because the longer it takes you to get from one to the other.

Anthony Codispoti (25:18)
⁓

Cheryl Lovell (25:35)
the bigger impact it has on our ability to see more, right? So if you can just manage your scheduling efficiently and keep your dots on the map as close as you can keep them, then you end up with a better outcome.

Anthony Codispoti (25:48)
Got it, so the consulting services that you’re providing with CLC Group is to the same kinds of organizations that you’re a COO at. It’s for home healthcare companies. Okay. Okay, and there’s not a conflict of interest there. the constellations fine with you kind of.

Cheryl Lovell (25:57)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, home health and hospice.

When I have

⁓ like a main client, if I do something for someone else, then I just run that by my client. Like, so just say that I would do something, I would talk to Constellation and be like, hey, are you good if I help this person with this? But I’m pretty much full time there. So

Anthony Codispoti (26:24)
Gotcha. And Cheryl, you’ve been recognized for excellence in the public sector and have experience in community investments. Can you say more about that?

Cheryl Lovell (26:25)
That’s my focus now.

Well, I think in the companies that I’ve run, I’ve won awards for innovation and quality. Some of them were, it feels like a hundred years ago, just trying back in the day, one of the awards that I won was for innovation and quality when everything was still on paper before there was even an electronic medical record, when all of your files were in giant file rooms with the wheelie arms, you know, that kind of thing. ⁓

and just trying to be more innovative because Medicare was changing all of the compliance perspectives. so just creating fun, unique ways. I created a compliance monopoly game where they could win prizes if they pass go based on their compliance. And remember, we’re tracking this all on paper, pieces of paper. was before there was like we were just getting to the place where you could scan in some of the Medicare questions and everything had to be done.

very manually. it was really a long time ago that we got to be even more creative and innovative with software and things. Now it’s really having the best tools in the toolbox. Like if you have the right tools in your toolbox, you can be more successful than when we had to like figure it all out on paper.

Anthony Codispoti (27:52)
The Monopoly game reminded me of, can’t remember the time period when McDonald’s had that really popular, was that part of the inspiration back then or the timing wasn’t aligned?

Cheryl Lovell (28:00)
I don’t remember why

maybe I don’t even remember why gosh it wasn’t like 2003, four or five maybe like it was a hundred years ago it feels like. Maybe it’s 20 years ago.

Anthony Codispoti (28:13)
So I’m looking at your website here, is constellationhs.com. yeah, see most of your locations are out east. I see Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Yeah. What are the future plans? What kind of growth do you guys have in mind?

Cheryl Lovell (28:25)
Ohio and Texas.

I think ⁓ for the CEO, sky’s the limit, whatever we can do and maintain. I think when you do a lot of new startups, gotta get, once you do them all, you gotta get them humming at a certain level. And I think Medicare is taking a long time to get things processed these days with all the changes and the cuts or whatever. So the process is a little bit slower than I think we’ve all seen in the past. So it takes a good year and a half to get those really standing on their own two feet. And then once that is,

Who knows, like it’s his circus and I just help him ring lead it all.

Anthony Codispoti (29:10)
See more about the challenges with Medicare.

Cheryl Lovell (29:14)
I just think they’re under a lot of scrutiny. There’s a lot of changes in the administration. There’s just a lot of things going on and I’m sure that there were cuts from a staffing perspective and it’s just a big machine and nothing is super efficient. I think people don’t even know this and I wish this is one of the things Doge would have handled, but Medicare’s backend system.

is still a DOS based system. When you log in directly to Medicare, it’s still the green and black screen. Like it is old. Like it is really, really old. It doesn’t talk. It’s not super efficient. And I think an upgrade to their back end would be much warranted and needed for them, but certainly above my pay grade. And I, you know, they try hard, but they’re certainly limited to what they have in front of them and what’s available.

Anthony Codispoti (30:06)
And so how does that impact you as you’re growing? is just taking too long to get the agreement set up with Medicare?

Cheryl Lovell (30:10)
It’s just time, it-

It’s just a lot a long time for them to respond to requests and to be able to update requests. And like we were just told, things that are normally taking 30 to 90 days may take 120 to 180 days. Like just simple requests, simple appeal requests, just simple things. So it’s definitely, ⁓ I think, impacting everybody in the industry.

Anthony Codispoti (30:35)
Yeah. Okay, so we’re back from a small technical glitch. had a little bit of a power hiccup, but we’re back into the interview. And Cheryl, I want to take this opportunity to kind of change directions a little bit. And I would like to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, personal or professional. How did you get through it? What did you learn through the process?

Cheryl Lovell (31:02)
Maybe I’ll talk a little bit about both personal and professional. So we adopted our son when he was five and a half years old from the foster care system in Atlanta. And, you you go into these things, maybe, you know, with grandiose visions or whatever, but when a child has a troubled, you know, upbringing up to five and a half,

there’s so much that that child has to overcome. becoming parents to a child who had some significant emotional and mental health needs was probably more than we bargained for. we spent the majority of his childhood trying to help create the best environment that we could. And he’s 21 today.

and doing well as an independent human, but we struggled ⁓ many of the years just trying to get him to be able to be a good human. like my one and only goal for him was to graduate high school. Like if I could just do anything, would be get him to graduate high school. And he it took him a couple of years after he decided that we couldn’t help him when he was 18 to kind of figure it out on his own. And

I’m happy to say that he’s, you know, a working adult in Georgia at this moment in time, but there are many days through his childhood that I thought, are we going to make it? Like, are we all going to make it? And it definitely impacted our family and our family dynamic. You don’t change those things for the world, but I was not necessarily equipped for the impact that it would have on me as a human, on my other son, on just our environment, the family in general. And so

Anthony Codispoti (32:36)
Mmm.

Cheryl Lovell (32:56)
there’s just, just, I think I would say to people who are in those situations, make sure you have a great support network, make sure you have people to talk to, make sure you are equipped to handle things. Cause I think people don’t talk about, ⁓ know, ⁓ like we’re adopting or we’re, you know, helping a child out of the foster care system. If you know anybody who’s doing that and you have loved ones reach out for support, because it is harder than I think anybody thinks it is. And I don’t think it’s one of those things people talk about.

because nobody wants to say don’t do those type of things. Everybody, you know, we all need people who are willing to support, but it is a significant impact. And ⁓ I’ll get on a little soapbox. The mental health availability for our youth, for people who are middle class or upper middle class, is non-existent. Insurance doesn’t cover it. You have to pay for it out of your pocket. You’ll be lucky if they…

put it towards your deductible. Most practices don’t take insurance, their cash pay, but they’re required to take Medicaid. And if you have a lot of money, you can pay cash. But for the people who are in that middle, upper middle class, when you’re talking about multiple therapy appointments a week that costs between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars an appointment, and they have to go two or three times a week, that’s in a significant amount of money that most people have to forgo because that

many people can’t afford that. And for the people who have working class, regular healthcare insurance, therapists have been so ⁓ impacted by the way insurance companies pay them that they won’t accept insurance. They’ll only accept Medicaid because they’re required to accept Medicaid. ⁓ And ⁓ you can’t get your insurance to accept and pay you back for any of the bills.

Like it’s really a difficult thing. And if there was something I could do in my retirement or whatever, it would be figuring out how to fix this problem. Because if you have a lot of money, you don’t have to worry about it. Like the special schools, like there was times when we looked at sending our son to a special school for a couple of years, they’re 50 to $80,000 a year. I can’t afford that. They wanted you to take reverse mortgages out. There’s no payment for those type of things. When some children need some kind of structured environment,

and families are out there, what’s that? And if you’re not taking out double mortgages or doing things, you can’t afford to send your children to these things that may help them. And so you feel really stuck as a parent and as a family when you want to give support and there’s nothing you can do and you can’t afford it and you can’t afford a second mortgage on your house to pay for your child’s therapy. That may or may not work, right? Like it’s just a crap shoot. It doesn’t work if they don’t, like it’s just.

It’s probably one of the biggest struggles and if I had something I could advocate for in my future and really be profoundly invested in it would be what happens to the kids in this middle class, upper middle class sector where the families do have health insurance but it is not helping them at all.

Anthony Codispoti (36:10)
And so the folks at the lower end of the wage scale, there things available to them through Medicaid. Is that my understanding then? Yeah. so, and folks who are very wealthy, they have their own means, but kind of people in the middle are sort of the ones that get stuck.

Cheryl Lovell (36:16)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you have Medicaid benefits…

100 % and it’s super frustrating.

Anthony Codispoti (36:29)
Yeah, as a parent, all you want to do is help, right? And you don’t know what’s going to help. And that’s a whole other set of frustrations on its own. Like you said, like therapy may or may not work. The child may not participate. Maybe the therapist doesn’t have the right connection. Like there’s all those sort of variables there on whether or not it will work. But you have to at least try different things. And accessing some of these different things to try is incredibly expensive and sometimes just completely inaccessible.

Cheryl Lovell (36:36)
Right.

right.

Right. And you’re so limited.

Yeah. It’s super, I mean, that’s probably the most frustrating thing I spent my entire life kind of working, you know, with or towards. And it just was, it definitely took a toll.

Anthony Codispoti (37:12)
And so as you’re kind of going through these really challenging years, ⁓ I’m going to guess it’s kind of you and your husband leaning on each other where there’s sort of other people in an extended support network that you guys could lean on.

Cheryl Lovell (37:22)
Yeah, I I

think I think I mentioned to you earlier that ⁓ we lived in Arizona and it was to be near family. We had lived away. We moved back to Arizona to be near family when he was younger to have that support. There is nothing better than, you know, having a strong family and family support. Not everybody has that. But I’m fortunate and we’re fortunate enough that we were able to have that. And we had our family supporting through the majority of the the our

children’s growing up, so.

Anthony Codispoti (37:54)
Wow. And is there a professional challenge that you want to give voice to as well?

Cheryl Lovell (38:00)
Yeah,

you know, I think ⁓ when I was in Arizona and I moved to Arizona to help a family business start ⁓ their home health hospice and palliative care company and we I came in early on at the beginning and ⁓ we grew that company very significantly, very, very quickly. But there’s a couple lessons that you learn when you’re ⁓

growing a business and I have the fortune of having some ownership in the business. But when you’re growing a business like that, ⁓ know, everybody’s focused on grow, grow, grow. What I learned ⁓ about growing in this type of industry where all of your reimbursement is in the rears, right? So you take care of people, but you’re paid 60 days behind, but you’re providing services 60 days ahead. ⁓ I think a lot of, and I’ve talked to a lot of smaller business owners or whatever.

you have to have the right amount of capital to pace your cash. And I think learning that lesson in real time was ⁓ unbelievably stressful. And we had a couple people try to give us advice and you’re young and stubborn and you don’t necessarily want to listen. And sometimes you learn your lessons way the hard way. And I think in that scenario, like everybody

gets glossy-eyed over, my god, we’re growing so fast and we’re so big and we got so big so fast. But you can’t always manage the money, the cash behind that and you have to have better. We just didn’t have a strong enough strategic plan as we started to grow too fast and outpaced our cash. And that was really, really hard lesson to learn.

Anthony Codispoti (39:47)
Yeah, I don’t think a lot of people realize that a lot of small businesses are sort of this in this in-between place of kind of acting like a bank, right? You’re fronting the cash to pay your employees to deliver this service today, but nobody’s fronting you that cash, right? You have to, you know, somehow have the cash reserve, have a line of credit, you know, money in the bank, because you’re not getting paid for 60 days.

Cheryl Lovell (40:14)
Right.

And the banks don’t, they don’t look at Medicare receivables in our industry as good collateral. ⁓ So it’s really hard to get the line of credit associated with what type of business you’re doing. So we learned a lot of lessons that way, like it’s not what you think it is. And it was so much harder.

than we thought it was going to be. there, you know, the personal guarantee part of loans and things like that, it puts a big toll and pressure on small owners. Like it’s just it was definitely stuff that I wasn’t expecting. And it was harder than I thought. And definitely, you know, have learned significantly. You can’t grow your business outside of your cash. And like, I guess you can’t learn that lesson sometimes till you go through it.

Anthony Codispoti (41:06)
Yeah. Is factoring a thing in your industry?

Cheryl Lovell (41:10)
⁓ It is, but I don’t recommend it to anyone because it takes so much. Our margins are so tight as it is, you can’t afford it.

Anthony Codispoti (41:20)
Yeah, they take a big chunk of it. And it’s interesting that banks wouldn’t ⁓ recognize those Medicare receivables in issuing lines of credit.

Cheryl Lovell (41:23)
Yeah.

You had to have enough personal

assets behind it. And so we just were

Anthony Codispoti (41:31)
Okay, because they didn’t

trust that the Medicare receivables were gonna get paid or? I don’t know, okay.

Cheryl Lovell (41:37)
Really don’t know why I just think it’s

wasn’t a thing for them. I don’t I don’t know because it’s too much paper. Here’s the think about the home health industry. Hospice is a little bit different, but think about the home health industry. The home health industry is a payment guessing system. You fill out a piece of paper at the beginning of the care that you’re delivering to that individual and Medicare anticipates that you’re going to get X amount of dollars, right? So they anticipate that patient is worth

$2,500 for the next 30 days. And then that patient is no longer with you and you discharge them. And depending on the care that you delivered and the things that you did, that $2,500 could go down to $200. If you only did a couple of required elements of the care, it could go down to $1,500. It could go above $2,500. So you’re, so you’re anticipating

what you’re gonna get paid in advance by your initial assessment, and then you get reimbursed based on what you say you did 30 or 60 days later. And they automatically make the adjustments.

Anthony Codispoti (42:47)
complicated.

Cheryl Lovell (42:49)
That’s a hard place to live.

Anthony Codispoti (42:49)
Yeah.

Cheryl Lovell (42:50)
It’s a hard place to run a business. Like home health just gets tougher and tougher and tougher. And there’s some legislation going on about more cuts to the home health industry. there’s just not going to be care available for the seniors if they continue to cut it. The margins are small. The labor keeps getting more and more expensive and it’s hard to keep up.

Anthony Codispoti (43:12)
And we’re in the midst of the silver tsunami where there are more and more people who are needing this kind of care. it’s, it’ll be interesting to follow. Setting all humility aside, Cheryl, what would you characterize is your superpower?

Cheryl Lovell (43:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

I think that my ability to come into a situation and see like all the puzzle pieces floating in the air and being able to try to fit them together and make that uniquely dynamic experience, because I just kind of.

Like if we were having a conversation, say that you wanted me to talk about your business, whatever your business is, you wanted me to talk about it and we have a conversation. I’ll be like, Hey, did you think of this? What about this? What about this? I may know nothing about your business, but for some reason, my mind works in this crazy way where I can just see like these, what about this? What about this? What about this? And I can really pull things together that you’re like, Holy cow, that’s like a really great idea. Or like, so that I feel like is one of my.

Unique traits.

Anthony Codispoti (44:17)
you’re able to play 3D business chess.

Cheryl Lovell (44:20)
I think a little bit. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (44:22)
Yeah.

How about a resource that you might recommend to our listeners? A book or a podcast, a course that’s been helpful for you?

Cheryl Lovell (44:31)
Um, you know, I, I’m really a fan of, you know, how to win friends and influence people like old school. Like I think in this day and age, that should be a mandatory high school reading requirement. I made my kids read it in high school and I have to say, um, that’s a huge thing. I taught my kids to communicate. This is a technology day and age. Nobody talks. They text. Everything is whatever. So an old school.

mandatory reading requirement for everybody entering the workforce would be how to win friends and influence people. I also think Lindsay only has really great storytelling capability when you’re talking about the ideal team player, things like that. If you haven’t read that book, I recommend read the ideal team player because it really does make a difference. And I’ll give a funny story about that. If anybody has read the book, he tells the story about the receptionist.

and how the candidate treated the receptionist. And that really was an impact on whether that candidate was gonna get a job. And so what I used to love to do when I had my company at Southland is when I had interviewees coming in, I would sit at the front desk. So I would sit at the front desk to check them in, to see how they treated me checking them in, not knowing who I was. And then when I walked them back to the interview and I sat behind my desk to conduct the interview,

Sometimes the shock on people’s faces was unbelievable. But it was, it was something, it was so, it was such a, I loved it. I’m just saying if you ever want to figure out people’s real whatever, if you’re the person conducting the interview, sit at the front desk and check them in for their interview and then walk them back because you will learn unbelievable things.

Anthony Codispoti (46:03)
Was that something you learned from the book?

Okay.

What was the most priceless reaction you can recall?

Cheryl Lovell (46:29)
Well, because someone came in and was late eating their food, you know, just not really prepared and were very dismissive to me checking them in and like, I’m here, like, I’m in a hurry, you, like you have to, like, I’m, it was just the way they handled themselves when they.

put themselves in a very stressful situation. And so then when I walked them back and sat down, they were like, God, I just blew this, didn’t I? And they just got up and left.

Anthony Codispoti (47:02)
Well, you know, got to respect at least that part of it. Like, saved you a little bit of extra time. ⁓ Another gold nugget from that book, because that was a good one.

Cheryl Lovell (47:03)
here. Right? Right. But it was it’s definitely enlightening.

Really?

understanding who another gold nugget from that book is really understanding the people who you have. And are you using all the talents of the people who you have? Right? Like, do you really are you really maximizing the potential now don’t over maximize the potential? Because that’s worse. Like that whole Peter principle thing is a true thing. I have a really good nurse in the field, I’m going to move her into management. I’m in a situation right now, where there was a person

that’s a friend of mine was like, I just moved my best nurse into management, you know, that kind of thing. And she didn’t make it. Like now, not only did she lose her best nurse in the field, she lost her best nurse to the company because she didn’t make it in the promotion. She didn’t, had no management experience, no leadership experience, no ability to draw from anything. And so,

that really impacted her business in a negative way that she did not expect. So you can’t just, because they’re really good here doesn’t mean they’re going to be really good in leadership. And I think that happens a lot in our industry. You have a great nurse, they’re good with their patients, they’re great with everything, but they can’t always lead. And if you’re going to promote people to be leaders who don’t have experience, you’ve got to give them training. You have to

give them leadership training, you to send them the leadership classes, you have to have them read books, because that is something that I think we do in healthcare all the time. We take really good clinical people and try to put them in leadership and they struggle, flounder and fail.

Anthony Codispoti (48:53)
And so in that example that you were just recounting there, that was sort of the missing piece is they just sort of plopped her into that position and didn’t give her that training that she needed to be successful.

Cheryl Lovell (49:04)
Right, and didn’t recognize that that’s why there was a struggle, right? Like not recognizing that you have to spend that, right? And they didn’t have anything to draw from and it was unfair.

Anthony Codispoti (49:12)
They thought it was her, that individual’s failure. Yeah.

How about?

Yeah. How about a daily practice, a habit, a ritual that is important to you, either getting you started for the day or keeping you on track?

Cheryl Lovell (49:31)
⁓ I, that’s a really good question. I love my morning. I hate to say this, but I love my little morning news update. Like I start my day every day with this like 20 minute, podcasts of my morning news updates. And I really enjoy it. And it just kind of helps me know what’s going on in the world and know that I don’t have things as bad as other places. And so it just makes me feel like, I can conquer my day. Yeah, I can conquer my day. It’s all going to be good.

Anthony Codispoti (49:54)
It recalibrates reality for you, huh?

Yeah, at least my life’s not as bad as that person’s. Is that the idea?

Cheryl Lovell (50:04)
Right. Well,

and I’m in general a high energy human. Like I just have high energy. I don’t have to do a lot to have it. just comes naturally for me. So I’m a high energy person and I tend to be very, very positive. I’m a glass half full for sure person.

Anthony Codispoti (50:22)
Yeah.

Love it. I think those make great leaders. Those are the people that others want to follow. ⁓ Charlotte, you sometimes our mistakes in the moment become our greatest teachers down the road. Is there an early career moment that seemed like a setback at the time that actually propelled you forward? Maybe you look back on that moment now with some gratitude.

Cheryl Lovell (50:47)
Yeah, I was working for a company that had significant change in senior leadership in the period that I worked there. And I was let go from that company and I had done a very, very good job. So I was super surprised. Like I’m let go. my goodness. Like, what am I going to do? But what

that allowed me to do at the time in my life was be able to move and experience ⁓ different post acute health care in different ways across the country and really project my career to the next level. So I think had that not happened, I would not have ⁓ been in the position to own my own home health and hospice with a family and to start my consult like

everything I think happens for a reason. And so but at the time, it feels so ugly, you get fired, like nobody wants to be fired. But like it happens to the best of us. Sometimes things don’t work out. Sometimes it’s not the right fit. And I think if you can look at it, that that is really you have to make hay when the sun shines, right? Like, so you don’t know when it’s going to be but you if you make the best of everything that happens to you, can project you and

Anthony Codispoti (52:03)
Hmm.

Cheryl Lovell (52:09)
everything happens for a reason that gets you to the next place. And I wouldn’t change any of my experiences. Some of them were harder than others, but I wouldn’t change any of them because they really made me who I am as a leader today.

Anthony Codispoti (52:22)
you know, I’ve been through similar things myself, I’ve seen other friends, other guests go through, you know, similar ⁓ trajectories where it’s like this door almost had to close in order for you to see another door that was a little bit further down the road. But it feels so painful. And it feels like it feels so final. And and almost paralyzing sometimes when that that current door closes, right?

Cheryl Lovell (52:51)
Right.

Yeah, and you don’t understand always and you question all the time, like, what could I have done differently? What why didn’t? Why didn’t they, know, like you just question everything, and you run those things over and over in your head. And so but it definitely is important to understand that everything happens for a reason, no matter how hard they are, and it’s going to get you to where you need to be.

Anthony Codispoti (53:18)
I like that message. What’s ⁓ one thing you wish more people knew about your industry?

Cheryl Lovell (53:26)
I wish they knew how much the regulations impact us from necessarily providing as much bedside care as we could. The documentation and the paperwork part of our industry, I think really prohibits maybe more excellent care because, you know, when you’re spending time bringing a patient onto services,

it’s an hour with the patient, but two hours of paperwork, right? Like, so if you could spend that full three hours with a patient and not two of it with paperwork, and I’m hoping that AI does big things with our ability to manage the paperwork and speak to texts and things like that. But what’s happening is our margins are really small and all the AI costs a lot of money. And so there’s got to be some happy medium where we can use the technology without

continuing to have the significant impact on costs. Like everybody’s gaining from it, but we’re still feeling the pain of the cost of the technology. And the margins just aren’t what everybody thinks they are. This is not like a million, you’re not gonna be a bazillionaire. Like you have to be doing this because you care about it. Like the owner of our company cares about delivering quality care, great care, great services.

And that is hard sometimes when you’re weighing like labor costs and what can you invest in and what can you buy for your staff and those kinds of things. It’s really difficult and we shouldn’t necessarily have to be in that type of burden. We should be able to have access to better things. We should have access to maybe less burdensome paperwork. There’s just so much technology available. And I think it’s sad when you can say there’s so much technology available, but Medicare’s back end system is still DOS based green screen.

Anthony Codispoti (55:24)
Right. Do you think like a possible solution could look something like the following like the visit with the patient is recorded either audio or video both and you know the AI sort of takes that and uses the transcript from that to kind of fill in some of the documentation and the notes and the forms that are required. Is this. Yeah. And. ⁓ And our.

Cheryl Lovell (55:45)
That’d be fantastic. That’d be fantastic.

Anthony Codispoti (55:50)
people doing this, it’s just cost prohibitive or is nobody even gone there yet?

Cheryl Lovell (55:53)
I think they’re working on it. There’s,

yeah, there’s transcript stuff available where you can do talk to text, there isn’t, and maybe people are working on it and I’m not up to speed in everything, but there’s talk to text now, but that’s, know, I’ll just, in our industry, it’s around $30 per person who uses talk to text to get their narratives done. That’s expensive when you think about it. Like if you have thousands of employees, $30 a person is expensive, right?

so, but there, there are some things coming. There are a few things, but I’m hoping that at some point, I mean, there’s a technology outright out right now where you can stick a little pod next to someone’s bed and it can monitor their respirations and their movement and things like that. And per predictive analytics, there are some cool things happening, but not necessarily. think, ⁓ there’s probably things happening on the backend for the paperwork burden. And I think that would be fantastic if we could record.

an interaction with the patient and that transcribed into the required paperwork so that it picked up all the things that it needed and knew how to do those predictive analytics. And I’m sure those things are being worked on, but I don’t know of any right now that are doing that in our industry.

Anthony Codispoti (57:10)
Well, if anyone’s listening and this is in your wheelhouse, you contact Cheryl and I will partner up with you and make this a reality. Just one more question for you, Cheryl. But before I ask, I want to do two things. First of all, everybody listening today, pause for just a second, open up that podcast app you’re listening to on now. Go ahead and hit the follow or subscribe button. I want you to continue to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with Cheryl Lovell from Constellation. ⁓

Cheryl Lovell (57:14)
Let’s do it.

That’d be great.

Anthony Codispoti (57:36)
If you got an extra second, just go ahead and leave us a little bit of feedback. A review would be nice. That helps other people find the show and make sure that they get to hear these great stories too. And Cheryl, before I ask this last question, I want to let people know either the best way to get in touch with you to follow your story or that of either of the companies that you’re

Cheryl Lovell (57:56)
Yeah, you could just reach me at sheryl at clcgroupco.com.

Anthony Codispoti (58:07)
Great, and we’ll include a link to your email address in the show notes. So last question for you, Sharon. We’ve had a great conversation today. You and I reconnect a year from now, and you’re celebrating something big. It’s something. It’s a big thing. What’s that one thing you’re

Cheryl Lovell (58:24)
that’s a good question. ⁓

⁓ I’m just gonna go personal. I hope it’s my son’s engagement and that he’s gonna be, you know, moving on and someday I’ll get to have grand babies. That would be like the best thing for me as a human.

Anthony Codispoti (58:43)
I love it. Okay. Well, I hope to hear that news here in the coming months. Well, share a level from Constellation. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Cheryl Lovell (58:47)
That’s awesome.

Thank you, it was nice talking to you. Everybody have a great day, thank you.

Anthony Codispoti (59:00)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.