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Health IT leaders ensure your healthcare facility is equipped for the future with strategic venue partners. SVP specializes in developing robust, scalable wireless infrastructure tailored to the unique needs of healthcare environments, enhance patient care, streamline operations, and meet the growing demands of digital healthcare with reliable connectivity.

Visit this week, health.com/strategic venue dash partners today, and transform your facility's wireless capabilities with SVPs innovative solutions.

Bill Russell: Welcome to This Week Health. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time.

Now, onto our interview

Justin has been instrumental in building wireless connectivity under his leadership, SVP has emerged as a leader in providing wireless infrastructure as a service. Ensuring venues across various sectors from healthcare to hospitality are equipped with cutting edge connectivity solutions.

Justin's forward thinking approach has not only addressed current connectivity challenges, but has also positioned SVP to anticipate and meet the evolving demands of our digital age. Justin, welcome to the show.

Justin Marron: Sarah, thank you so much for having me and happy St. Patty's today to you. I mean, obviously I'm rocking the green today. I know these aren't date specific podcasts, but it is St. Patty's Day

Sarah Richardson (2): and the only reason I'm not wearing green is my only piece of green clothing is a Christmas dress, and it just somehow was not gonna be able to explain or pull that one off today. So you got my like red Christmas sweater instead.

Apparently

Justin Marron: this is good. Apparently St. Patrick didn't, would like green either. He wore blue. There's a whole bunch of, misnomers about that whole deal Anyway,

Sarah Richardson (2): both your mission and direction where you've taken the company.

Justin Marron: Yeah. No, I appreciate the question. So I'll start back from the beginning, because influenced where we got to. effectively at a school, I worked in the financial world and the joke was if the window's opened, I would've jumped out. I learned a ton while doing that. but I really wanted to do my own thing. I really wanted to get into infrastructure. I wanted to develop infrastructure, but also develop infrastructure that had a service to it. so not just, like a power plant, but something , that had a service component to it as well. we spent, I really kicked off and cut my teeth in the wireless space, building cell towers all over the country and rooftop sites. And during that timeframe we saw the migration, and the tax incentive dollars flowing into renewables. And so this jersey kid originally was all over west Texas in the upper Midwest building.

And as technology's change, these systems are gonna migrate and become greater and greater and stronger, and stronger and stronger. And there needed to be a way to really. offer a service to folks that made sense for everybody. And so that was part of the genesis of can we come to market?

Can we do it differently? Can we show everybody at the table that they're all getting value, and they're all getting the proper service and everybody wins. If that's the case, right? You can check all those boxes. Then everybody's like, yeah, this does make sense. let's keep going, let's keep talking.

Sarah Richardson (2): Well, and it's important to have. Your availability for that always on wifi connectivity is an example, and not have it flowing through some of the same pipes as your clinician and patient data. And too often that's where hospitals get into a bit of a stuck situation and that you've got all this data going over the same pipes and that differentiation is such a win.

Justin Marron: No a hundred percent. So, so at STP, we're delivering on this demand driven opportunity for this critical infrastructure in what we call the underserved enterprise market, right?

We design, we build, own, operate, monitor, maintain, and upgrade this mission critical infrastructure over our long-term contracts. The key last part of that is we upgrade 'em, right? Because we know as we're talking right now, technology are gonna change, and that's all part of our offering. from an in-building perspective.

You mentioned wifi. we actually offer wifi even though we don't do it. And I'll tell you why. We've been asked numerous times across the country to acquire systems to put that in place. I think the next, migration really is gonna be to 5G and cellular and CBRS as you go down that path.

They're typically 10 to 20 years, and we really lock the pricing in. So a healthcare, CIO and CFO sits down with us and they go, great. I know my price from today going into the future, and you are now taking all the risks and all the liabilities off my plate, and it's a fixed cost. from SVP's perspective, we target healthcare for sure.

That's our bread and butter, that's our favorite industry. We also have a lot in hospitality and gaming. We have a retail portfolio, but primarily nationally. and really the core prop, just to dumb it down, into simplify it is. it's really the delivery of an all-inclusive turnkey wireless infrastructure as a holistic managed service where we're effectively taking out the risk and liability.

We'll pull them in as well. but really the thought is, we're building these state-of-the-art systems today and then going into the future, I.

Sarah Richardson (2): So I wanna cover the sort of evolution of connectivity you've seen the demand for in building wireless change over the past decade. Yeah. I'm curious what's driving it, but also how you are staying in front of it if you're taking that risk on for your clients.

Justin Marron: Now that cellular's at 5G, we believe this is the right opportunity and the new opportunity to relieve these overutilized wifi systems in hospitals.

Not just for voice, 'cause the connectivity for 5G on wifi doesn't work as well. Anyway, I. but for speed throughput, and primarily it's for security. wifi is accessible right? When you have federally encrypted, signal source from the carriers that's very encrypted and very safe and secure.

Justin Marron: that's another area Focus. We have another thing, core wireless system. I mentioned RTLS. That's been installed in a lot of hospitals and that's continuing to grow and I think there's a way to jump on that. And then finally, I'll just touch on one last one.

CBRS is definitely the way of the future. We're at the forefront of it. We believe in it. and it's something that we're pushing to our clients with helping educate them on it and then letting them make the decision. like we're here when you're ready. Adding different technology to an existing system is not that difficult, because we overbuild our systems. and so for us to add different layers is not as challenging as it may seem.

Sarah Richardson (2): With that angle and the necessity truly for robust wireless infrastructure in healthcare today, what are some of the benefits and the wins that you immediately see when it comes to both patient care and hospital operations?

And then they would potentially, provide a medication to you. and then billing would get that, and that invoice would be put out. So if you think about like the advantages of these type of technologies today, you go to the hospital and you hurt your eye. The doctor walks in, typically with a wireless device, almost always.

Sometimes it's an iPad, and they'll literally come up and they'll scan your eye with a new AI type of system. Like, I see you shaking your head this right. It will diagnose the problem. It'll suggest medications to your doctor right then and there, which they can select, which gets immediately sent to your local pharmacy.

Before you put your shoes back on your invoices are already going to your insurance company, right? If it's been properly coded. And so these are just some anecdotal type of scenarios of how these systems are changing healthcare and the reality is. It's also an indicator of how much data throughput's gonna actually have to come.

Sarah Richardson (2): I've worked in hospitals for, and casinos for 25 plus years and there were things you would say you can't make it up. There's places where implementing these solutions, especially in large venues, is gonna have some of those. You can't make it up scenarios.

What is one that you're willing to share and how do you overcome them? You go do your recon for a new client and you're like. Okay. Wow. What are some of the things that you love to overcome? Because they're hard. ,

Justin Marron: so there are more than a few, right? We've had, I'm smiling 'cause I've, I'm thinking about some of the war stories, but.

And so that's one issue. Other issues are, oh, don't you know, there are six more subterranean floors that were not part of these drawings or, think about leaded walls, for example, that were not part of those drawings. I'm just thinking about the, like, the little minute details as far as the design's concerned. Another issue uh, and we just roll with that, right? It is what? It's, another issue where, that you see in healthcare, especially in older locations, is asbestos. like where the healthcare partner says. There's no asbestos in this location. And then you start pulling cable and building out the systems and the next thing you know, you find asbestos, right?

And then you gotta mitigate that system. You gotta mitigate that problem and then continue work and make sure it's a safe work environment.

How do you prepare for what's coming next? And we've mentioned 5G and some others, but when you think about what it takes to either upgrade or integrate some of the new enterprise developments and these bigger environments, how do you know when the right time is to upgrade a client and how are you educating them about the things they need to be considering as well?

Justin Marron: Yeah, I think it's a few things, so, so. The first thing we like to do, and I know this sounds cheesy, maybe, is we just sit down and listen. Like, what are you guys thinking? What are your issues today? What are you thinking about the future? And then we start designing in our head like, what the system could look like and what it could potentially do. then we reach out to our technology partners and say, this is something we're gonna do. What's cool next? What's coming next? Like, what else should we be thinking about to go talk to them about? and mind you, we're not selling their service. We're not taking commissions on those other services we're just saying.

The data throughput's going to be needed there. We're pulling it, vertically, and then of course horizontally because the second part of that when we were talking about the upgrade path is we know antenna identification's gonna have to come. So when technology like wireless, which sounds like it wouldn't make sense, but as a technology gets better, you would think you would need less and less of it.

The reality is you need more and more of it. You need more and more of a line of sight to that antenna. Right. Or to that device that's propagating the signal. especially in building as these systems migrate and get stronger and faster, et cetera. So, and the last part of that is we think about our partners and their core operating business.

It's our bet and it's our risk and our responsibility, to pull as much fiber as we possibly can fit into there, even if it's just dormant for a while. 'cause we know at one point it's gonna be used and that also will mitigate any future disruptions for those potential clients as well.

Sarah Richardson (2): And you don't get a lot of time to disrupt the, OR to run more fiber

through the environment for sure. So overdoing it to a degree makes perfect sense. I would love for you, Justin, to share one of your favorite stories about how you have truly transformed a client's operation or even the patient experience. I.

And they told me, and I said, here's a check. I'll buy it exactly what you paid for it. So you get your money back. I'm gonna fix this system. I'm gonna upgrade this system so it works properly. I don't wanna say save your necks. but that's how they felt, in that case, they were appreciative of that and we built the system out and they've been one of our best references, period.

Right? And we think about our business, we think about making our customers happy. other than working you guys, right? We really don't advertise. and we don't really market our business. I think you have to have the credibility in the space first and foremost from your clients.

She wrote an email and she's always said she would always sneak out and talk to her daughter. And she's like, I didn't wanna get in trouble with my boss, so I would always go in this back stairwell. And it was like the kid was a little younger, immature. So she was always making phone calls and she's like, it never worked.

And I'd have to run downstairs. And I was always in trouble trying to get back to my desk. And she goes, now I can call from anywhere. I can call from under my desk. I can call from the stairwell. And it was just a personal, like, anecdote. I was like, that's so cool. I told my guys, I'm like, print that out.

Put that on the wall. like, don't advertise that. But that's something that's, that makes us feel good that we made someone's day better, at least in the space.

Sarah Richardson (2): Well, and to your point, CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, you pick your healthcare information technology executive, they call each other and ask one another about how they are solving problems.

Mean I just give it to you and Paul or Beau will be like, yeah, like you gotta be kidding me and HIMSS, y'all did a great tour of a local casino that just has the most modern, amazing impact on what it is you're endeavoring to do. And hospitals and casinos worked in, both of 'em in Vegas have that always on level of necessity and it's important across the continuum.

And you do that for your clients.

We're gonna cover everything. your subterranean, your stairwells, your towers, which were normally not covered, the podium, like the gaming floor area, and they started thinking, wow, what are the other things we could throw onto this system? And we worked at them on it. Do you know they don't have room service.

They use their cellular system in that location and people call from the rooms to order food from the restaurants in the location that get brought up. And so it was a massive cost savings that they didn't even foresee when we said, we're gonna cover everything and this is how it's gonna work, and we're gonna bring all three carriers, day one.

And they're like, this is awesome. Right? And this is a, you take healthcare for example, this is a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate. And they were like, we love this, and you guys go do this. And that was honestly, Sarah. That was one of our first deals, one of our first systems that we built out was one of the biggest in Vegas, it's almost 20 million square feet now.

Like has to happen, but nobody really wants to do it in-house. And now it's a fixed cost. It's a 10 plus year agreement. The CIO and the CFO facilities teams, they're just aligned on the fact that this is something that works. And I look at it like this, it's one less thing to worry about and there's plenty to worry about.

Justin Marron: it's funny you say that because I remember when we kicked off, I remember going to meet with CIOs and I asked them about their plans, about their long-term. Full lifecycle management of different systems in their healthcare group. And I said, talk to me about CAT scans.

I'm gonna do the whole thing. Tell me about x-ray systems. Great. Tell me about your landline. Here are all my plans. They're pulling, binders off the shelf. I said, tell me about the fourth utility I. And they looked at me like fourth utility. And I said, yeah, I mean you have water, gas, electric, wireless is your fourth utility, right?

And then we said, here's our plan to take this all off your plate and it's gonna have fixed costs and you're not gonna have to worry about this again. And here's our plan. because your plan is our plan. Right? And they're like, this is awesome. like this is the utility we have to be thinking about.

We love the fact that it's all encumbered and inclusive and you guys are now gonna deal with this. and I remember this quote from this, CIO said, I have 74 things in my desk and this was 75, so now I'm back to 74. and it was like, great, like, thank you. And to your point, it just, it's, they're outta that business and they're back into focusing on, their core business, which we should all be doing.

Sarah Richardson (2): Let's just cast the crystal ball into the future because you have aspirations for SVP. And then you also need to stay ahead of infrastructure, wireless things that are coming.

How do you take all of that knowledge, prepare for it, but also meet your clients where they are in any given moment?

I dunno if you saw on the news, but we did a private placement and got investment grade rated and we have amazing debt lenders beyond that. So. From a capital perspective, we're set up to keep going, you know, up right. And up until the right, as I like to say. and our growth's been off the charts and we want to continue to do that.

No different than like Epic, right? With like healthcare data records. Like people who aren't even in healthcare just hear Epic and they go, oh, I know what that is. like I almost want that for us, some level that type of success. and as far as staying ahead, we are super tight to all like the different OEMs out there and the carriers, and we know what technologies are coming. And not only do we do it, but we're contractually obligated, right? With our clients to ensure that they have the best state of the art type of systems that are working off today's technologies. And of course, we're looking into the future. We know what the next technologies are coming and we build our systems.

And what we don't know, we don't know, right? So we protect our corner by overbuilding, right? And so when those do come, we're ready for 'em.

Sarah Richardson (2): Thank you for all that you're bringing to our industry and beyond.

Justin Marron: More importantly, we're so happy we found you and thank you for what you guys do. we've gotten so many referrals out of everything we've done with you guys, that it's just, it's been amazing.

Thanks

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