Biomed Opportunities In The Federal Sector

I am joined by retired CW4 Tony Danko CEO of Capital i. We sit down to discuss opportunities for Biomeds in the Federal section of employment. There are multitudes of avenues available to Biomeds and one being the GS system. Tony has made a point to bridge the gap for Biomeds whom wish to find positions in the VA hospital system, Tobyhanna Depot, and even civilian sector placement. We have a great discussion about intricacies of the Federal sector, how to stand out, and how Capital i can help you find what your looking for. I highly encourage you to sit back and listen to all this man has to share!

For more information check out the link below!
https://capitali.us/

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLisOVWzYA0rq9UrYCz7fU7HNBjXgwc8DG

Transcript

Chace Torres: 0:14

Welcome back, everybody. I'm your host the beard biomed. And today, I actually have a guest for 2023. I am joined by Tony Danko from Capitol i. And we are just going to get into a little bit about who they are, what they represent what they can bring you and just kind of as well as myself sit back and learn about what they have to offer. So Tony, welcome to the show.

Tony Danko: 0:38

Chace, I appreciate you having me on.

Chace Torres: 0:41

It's been an endeavor longtime come in, and I'm glad to have you on. I'm interested to learn kind of all the different facets and cogs that are involved with the company. First, before we just get into any of that, I would love to just hear a little bit about your background. You know what brought you here today?

Tony Danko: 0:59

Yeah, absolutely. And my biomed background actually starts at the same place where yours started, Army, went to the DoD be med school, I went up to Sheppard Air Force Base, so I wasn't old enough to go to the shepherd to Okay, yeah, so we both went to shepherd. And then throughout my career, I transitioned as an NCO and a warrant officer, and then retired as a CW four. So I had various management responsibilities within the Army. And just, you know, started off with the biomed piece, and really took to it and enjoyed it, and now doing it on the, as a retiree on the commercial side and civilian side, you know, working through the field and seeing people and opportunities, like, like you have, and, and putting some information out there definitely wanted to add to the content, expose folks to our company, and what we do, and look for people that are looking for work in this field, and folks that might need some assistance with with our services.

Chace Torres: 2:10

I appreciate the army background. You know, I would hope everybody knows by now that the bread and butter of where the biomed comes from, is from the military schoolhouse, I think roughly 60 70% of our field is contributed through, you know, the six, eight alpha, at least through the army program. And then, you know, all the other tri services that's now down at San Antonio, which, you know, as critical as you know, that that feeding source of new biomass comes through that array even, you know, very, I think last time I spoke to somebody that oversees that program, you know, even the army, at least from their standpoint, is seeing a drop in decline. And, you know, getting biomass in which, you know, trickles down, obviously, to civilian front. And that's where, you know, companies like yourself come in to, you know, give veterans obviously, a leg up and other people that are interested in finding opportunities within our field, because it's, there's always an opportunity somewhere. One of my chiefs back in the day told me that, you know, you can find success anywhere in the Bama field as long as you're willing to travel. So I was not, so my options were limited. But I would love to hear, just give us a little bit of insight about what capital is today.

Tony Danko: 3:37

Yeah, absolutely. So what we do is we kind of started off looking at the government contracting, mainly augmented staff, some consulting services. So the company started with basically just me as a billable employee doing consulting work. And then as we grew, we start to win some contracts. We support the depots that Usama so we're a subcontractor for Gobelet frontier. So we have about 20 biomed in those four depots across the across the US. So we got Toby Hannah Hill Air Force Base, Sierra, which is near Reno, Nevada, and then Stockton, so Tracy, California, right. And then we also kind of grew from there and got on another contract with the VA. So we support the different VA medical centers, mainly doing medical device integration. So having those devices start to talk to the EHR as they're rolling out, Cerner. And again, those positions are across the US. So we have about 30 to 40 biomedical supporting the VA and many of them doing the information system side.

Chace Torres: 4:56

So, since you are so integrated into that whole infrastructure of supplying, you know, the VA the depots, you know, because that's kind of like its own ecosystem almost, you know, outside of the civilian sector. But obviously, it's contracted work. And you can have people put in there and long term positions too. But I think let's, let's, let's, let's take it from our perspective of somebody is about to exit the military as they want to get into position. And as it was explained to me back in the day, there's a slew of different prerequisites and things you got to do to get into that, that GIS system. Start working your way. I was wondering if you could just give like, maybe a kindergarten version, a broken down version of how that all works?

Tony Danko: 5:52

Yeah, absolutely. So in the interesting thing to the civilian market. biomedics can be former furniture, installers, and then they're within an organization for long enough, they get exposed, they start touching the equipment, and then they can they can be a biomed. Now, when you start looking at the federal sector, in the DOD and the VA, they're pretty much just three ways to be a biomed. Number one is the DoD B med school. That's that's a prerequisite if you hit that you're in. The other one would be a an associate's degree in electrical engineering with a biomedical concentration. And then the third way is, if you have experience, you're not formally trained, but you have the AMI credential, whether it be a C bet, or C res, or things like that. That's pretty much the gatekeeper, to get you into federal service as either a contract a contract or supporting the federal government, or have a federal employee, a GS employee. So our bar for hiring and our target for recruiting is our folks with the one of those three credentials, right, or education pieces.

Chace Torres: 7:14

And I think when I was initially looking, you know, obviously, I think veterans will get a little bit more of an opportunity through the system when they're applying to such different positions. If you want to my breaking down a little bit of the the GS side of it, like maybe some of the things that somebody looking to get into that position, needs to look out for what they need to do to set themselves apart, you know, go through the process kind of deal.

Tony Danko: 7:45

Yeah, so one of the big things is, I'd say probably about 30% of our employees have been hired or, you know, poached by the GS system, from the government. So it's, they use our technicians and our personnel system to do a test drive. So if you really want to get into the GS system and start to work for the federal government, if you if you find a contractor that's supporting, that's a huge pool, for those hiring managers on the on the government side to pull from a lot of those contractors. Now the other piece too, is just to make it known that you want to go after one of those positions. And it's just really being a general biomed. That's well rounded in a lot of general biomed devices, and then be able to take a look and go in at the ground level, you know, not everybody is going to be a CT tech, or, you know, fix an MRI. But if you're a general biomed, and you can demonstrate that you can repair all kinds of equipment, and that you're a problem solver, then you can definitely have a leg up. So of course, there's some formal things you need to do. So if you go to USA Jobs, you build out your profile, to apply for the different positions that are posted. And then you work through that way. I believe on one of your podcasts, or a couple episodes ago, you talked about some resumes, you know that 10 page resume, that's just gonna get lost in the sauce obsolete nowadays. Yeah, you don't want to read that don't don't provide a 30 page list of all of the pieces of equipment that you've ever programmed in your life. You know,

Chace Torres: 9:29

see, I still I still talk to some managers just across the field and some people still like to see that the list of every device that you know, and like I've seen that coming out some of the people being taught that the put on the resumes coming out some of these programs and it's good that you know, you can list generally like specialty, I usually say specialty, absolutely put that on there, but I don't need to know that you know how to work on these 10 different type of patient monitors. It's it's the same type of theory. And I feel like it's, I think we need to get away from that to where people are telling new recruits new people getting into the field trying to get positions to list off every single thing they work on. And I still see that.

Tony Danko: 10:19

Yeah, and I think a good rule of thumb is if it's something that you can learn just in your biomed, General Training, we'll leave that off.

Chace Torres: 10:28

But anything that's loveseat, right, so you kind of deal.

Tony Danko: 10:31

Yeah. And if it's specialized, or you went to manufacture, training, absolutely include that. Because that that could be, you know, a cost driver, you can just, you know, a prospective employer could see, I like to hire this person, they're, they're going to eliminate costs, that's

Chace Torres: 10:47

the perfect way to find it, if you got a certificate. If you're going to OEM train, you're gonna get a certificate. Absolutely. Somebody paid for you to go. So, obviously, we know that a lot of these depo level positions and, you know, the whole GS VA infrastructure, there's always a need for people to get into that system. Now, I would assume that you guys also, you know, get people into regular civilian positions as well, too, or is it just specifically federal?

Tony Danko: 11:18

Yep, yep. No, we're, we're going on the civilian side. So we do operate as an independent service organization. So we support health systems. And then the range really, that we support health systems are from that, that general biomed that staff augmentation, and then all the way up to that, that management and that leadership. You know, I was talking to Deanna swords, who's the CTO, or sorry, Dan Hughes, who's the CB five, Army Command Chief Warrant Officer right now. She's a senior 670 alpha, and, and I hire all of her retiring, CTV fours and CB threes. So I was joking with her last year that I had more CTV fours on my team than she has on hers. We were a great springboard from from active duty to the civilian side. And so what we do is we have some management consulting. So within the Usama, as well, we have some of these retired warrant officers that provide that management consulting policy oversight strategy. And then we're providing that same talent to the private sector, you know, kind of those those private hospitals and health systems, either to look at their data, look at the policies and procedures SOPs. So we have the seasoned retired warrant officers that can look at these programs and provide some leadership, mentorship and oversight of those different programs. So So in everything that falls within that range, we also provide, we have some good data analytics teams. We can do CMMS integration, we have some partners that we work with, we're inventories. So all those things to do the healthcare, technology management in the medical device lifecycle management, we provide that support.

Chace Torres: 13:15

I like that because you guys are actively putting them in a places for success. One of the things at least when I was getting out that was so frustrating to me is that it felt like there wasn't as much support, I guess, like I know, they've changed some things overall, when it came to like, preparing you to go out and civilian sector and, you know, find success, which again, like I've been told that the whole walk out of the military kind of deal like prepping you for the whole thing has changed several times. But, you know, even then, like I was I was running a biomed shop, I had technicians under me. I was NCO I was you know, all that stuff I had, I had experience in multitudes of things. But, you know, I applied to like 2030 jobs, and most people don't realize just what a military trained biomed brings to the table, much less somebody in a leadership position that lives breathes like you said writing policies and procedures, the active management system analytics all that stuff. It it's good that companies out there like yourselves are giving veterans a leg up because I still to this day will argue that veterans still struggle finding positions from from your, you know, your aspect, obviously, you have the data and you can see where you're fielding people and such. Do you see that on your side? Or am I just kind of

Tony Danko: 14:49

Yeah, no, you're absolutely spot on because it's really about the veteran and and understanding their value. And then how do I describe that value? Do that somebody outside of the military can understand. So for example, when when I got out, I went to work for Kaiser Permanente. And when I was interviewing, everything was an acronym or an initialism. And I was able to just spit it all out for military jargon. But then to go back and kind of soften some of that, and translate that to what those civilian agencies or civilian companies are used to saying, you start talking about cost savings, looking for optimization. And then there's a lot of time to that you have to talk to either an IT professional, that's gonna run the HTM program, a supply chain professional, that's gonna run the HTM program, or in my case, when I went to Kaiser Permanente, it was a facilities ran the Clinical Technology program. So to really kind of have that, that that tint of facility facilities and how biomed works with facilities and my experience, and how that would all translate. So it's really as is figuring out who is in charge of that organization who's going to run it? And then and then what are those major touch points are kind of buzzwords that will resonate with them from your experience.

Chace Torres: 16:19

That's, that's the key, right? Because every facility is going to, you know, work and have different responsibilities and expectations of the biome, Ed's, you know, I've came across this because we're ISO to the company I work with. And, you know, you'll go into a facility and biomed is at same level, as you know, all the other departments, you know, their voices heard, they have clear expectations, guidelines, and they work in tandem with everybody else, then you go to another facility, and they're, like, three tiers below, or, you know, what facilities it is over them, you have multiple people that they have to report to. So it's, it's a constant struggle in our field is trying to navigate where you fit into that ecosystem, because everybody has a different culture and expectation for us.

Tony Danko: 17:10

Yeah, no. And that's the other piece, too, is is then to go into that with some confidence. Because there are a lot of folks that are that are nervous, you know, they've done this in the army for whether it be six years, or 20 or 30 years. It's what they know. And then there's this fear or this, this idea, when you're in the military that we always talk about, well, on the civilian side, they don't do it this way, because it's for profit. But the dirty little secret is this. They're just as confused or figuring it out as we are in the military. And there are a lot of things that from the military, we can bring to those civilian organizations to help out. They don't run things perfectly. Like we think we think they do.

Chace Torres: 17:58

Oh, they do. Anybody watching, you're listening, you'd be surprised at just how unorganized some hospital systems can be. You know, that raises a good point, too. You have individuals with decades of experience leading teams leading, you know, the whole dynamic, like you said, that CW four CW fives that are just a cut. I mean, you don't just get to that position, just being run of the mill. The warrant officers within our field are like top tier they are. They've they've done some things that obviously lended them to that position. And rightly so they should get the same opportunity to put them as close to that level. If not, you know, around that. I know, when I got out, I actually had to kind of start over almost, I was in a leadership position. And then I had to come, I had to humble myself really quickly and realize that I don't know that much. A lot of the equipment, for instance, that the military utilizes, none of that stuff's getting used out here in the civilian sector. A lot of the processes and how things are ran are different people's mentalities are different. So you know, I had to I had to lower myself and you know, start, but I'm back up to where I was at before. And I don't know if that's difficult for people that's was possibly in the position that you and several others were, like, having to just take, like, a regular technician job as opposed to acclimating and moving into something more fitting their expertise.

Tony Danko: 19:36

Yeah, you know, and it's expertise and then and then in kind of positions of authority or responsibility. So I would say, when you're in the military, it's almost like a 100% or even a 10x responsibility marker, whether it be the the amount of equipment or the dollar amount of budget that you're running.

Chace Torres: 20:00

We'd love our dollar amounts in the military was responsible for this much

Tony Danko: 20:05

equipment that Yeah, yep, yep. So it's when you step out, you're not going to be in a position where you're responsible for that much or you're not going to have the authority, the same authority that you had when you were in. And then that is very humbling, you know. So when I transitioned out, I was working for the Office of the army surgeon general. So at a very high levels, we had these huge budgets. And then I went to, you know, a regional, you know, health system at Kaiser Permanente in the mid Atlantic states. And my, my scope, and my responsibility was was much smaller. So yeah, you're definitely right, you got to humble yourself, but then you can demonstrate to your leaders that you can take on more. But don't jump in right away, just trying to take everything over to show that you're competent. Go through and learn what's happening within that organization, learn any new devices, if you're working on devices, or if they're, or if you're in a management position, I would say the biggest thing that you're going to want to learn would be the financial side. You know, budgeting, managing the finances and

Chace Torres: 21:15

dealing with accreditation. Yeah, exactly that that was the that was the thing that was different for me. You know what, that's why I also went and got the CH TM, because, you know, that's something that lets me stack myself a little bit higher when it comes to management. And I had to really sit back and I really leaned on my manager a lot to teach me the ins and outs of, you know, what, what's dealing with joint commission, like, what's dealing with DMV? Like? What are some of the questions they're gonna ask? Expectations, you know, it's just, it's like, I love how you broke it down, though, it's not so much as you know, we're not incapable of doing it. But take some time to acclimate into your new situation, become proficient at that, and then take on more. And they really get to know, I had a, this wasn't obviously a warrant level site, but I had a technician reach out to me that's about to transition out. They're like, hey, what would you recommend, I'm going into a hospital system soon, I'm like, first thing you got to do is just be ready to learn, you know, lean on the technicians that are already there. Because they're, they already know the system, they know the ins and outs, the expectations, they have the knowledge, and then go around and meet all the staff in each department, because those are the people you got to work for. And by those couple of things, you're going to be successful in pretty much any environment, as long as you go into it like that. Yeah,

Tony Danko: 22:39

no, you're absolutely right. And, and if you're going to be responsible for sections, I think definitely look at that administrative staff that's taken care of that, that department or section, and then the clinical end users and talk to them, because you're gonna get some insights from them. And if they trust that you're there biomed like, that's, that's a huge compliment. If a clinician says he's my be met, or she's my be met, you know, let them let them kind of take ownership of what you provide to them, right, and then you're going to have an advocate. And then if you build that relationship, and sometimes parts may take a long time to come in, or equipment starting to backup, you're gonna get a little bit more leeway, you're gonna get some benefit of the doubt from folks that you have a good relationship with. So I think that's, that's a huge piece, where if, if you're, if you're confrontational, email start flying quickly, in the commercial side, and it'll go all the way up to the the chief operating officer, a president of a system, that biomed is terrible, if you just have a good conversation, and good rapport with folks,

Chace Torres: 23:47

and that is one thing that transferred over from the military, though is emails are everything. They saved your button, the military, and they save your button, civilian sector. You can't argue an email. That's right. So let's put here a little bit so capital, I obviously like you said, you you help place people in the right position. But I guess what, what else do you guys do? Like is there? Is there more of what you you know, other people could seek you out for for other reasons.

Tony Danko: 24:15

Yeah, so So obviously, the talent management or talent acquisition, that's what we want to we want to focus on and get some good employees. But you're right, so we do provide services. And the services are our range of of things that happen within the lifecycle. So one of the things that we like to start with is your inventory and your and your data for your inventory. So is everybody wants to have a world class and most optimal htm program that runs a huge ATM program, and all these other gee whiz things? How but you can't get to that level of optimization until you have a really fun I'm understanding of what your inventory looks like. And then that your data within your inventory is normalized. So you can run data analytics against what you're doing. So that's one of the big offerings that we do, we can come in, and we align your asset inventory to an equity standard. Because we all know, as people bring on equipment, within a hospital or even on on an ISO, there's two or three or four different people that are plugging this stuff into the CMMS. And it's not always going to be the

Chace Torres: 25:34

same standardization.

Tony Danko: 25:37

Yeah, so standardization is for data for data entry, and then normalization for what you're calling everything, right. So that's a big piece. So once that is all standardized, or normalized, then you can really make the data work for you. Because then instead of you have these these ultrasounds, that you have the same make model, but you haven't entered 10 different ways for your 10 different image, you're not going to be able to tell that right data story, to then be be able to do different data analytics or run reports to show how that stuff's performing in a maintenance environment.

Chace Torres: 26:21

I had a creditor say one time when they were just, you know, it was a random hotspot camera which one it was, but they said, the best thing you can do that's going to always make me happy with you is when it comes to your processes, it's how you do everything is clearly defined what you do, and then do what you say you're doing. If you can do those two things, you're more likely going to be on my good side, as opposed to me tracking you down for something. And that goes in tandem with what you were talking about. As you know, there has to be standardization in our processes, how we word things, how we do things, there shouldn't be any deviation from the expectations for each technician, everybody should be doing the same thing. And that also gives our field as a whole credibility. Showing showcasing that we are competent, that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing that, you know, that goes into the right to repair thing with OEMs. If we're on the money when it comes to that stuff, it's it's gonna be lights out, there's there's no argument and that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing.

Tony Danko: 27:27

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And then the other thing too, that when when the pandemic hit data was King, I mean, how many people were asking for how many ventilators do we have? How many BiPAP so we have, what's the status? Where is it? And that was that was life and death stuff. You know what life and death data analytics that we were trying to dig through, and how many man hours we had to waste to just scour the facilities and try to clean up our database bases, looking for those types of items that were needed and needed to be spread out and put into the right areas to support patient care.

Chace Torres: 28:08

So obviously, we covered a lot today. And this is not going to be the last time you're on here. Because i You are a wealth of information and resources for the field that I just can't, I can't just limit it to this one time. So for anybody listening and watching, Tony is going to be back on here because capital I has lot more to offer. And just educating, providing opportunities. I want to really, I'm all about supporting our veterans and giving everybody a leg up in the best chance to succeed. So, Tony, I really appreciate you being on today. It's been a pleasure, sir. I know this has been a long time coming. And I'm glad we finally got the link up our schedules to get this moving. Yeah, absolutely.

Tony Danko: 28:53

You know, I appreciate it. And I appreciate everything you're doing to pushing the field forward. I mean, it's it's it's places and things and like what you do and what the other folks do to get the social media out there. Want us to educate the people in our field, but then to educate folks to come to the field. And that's really what we need to focus on. So I appreciate everything you're doing. So thank you

Chace Torres: 29:18

for having me. I appreciate that. That's that's the biggest struggle and it's not going to get solved overnight. But if we're consistent at it and really dedicated to fixing the issue, it will happen. Absolutely. Thank you. All right, sir. Until next time, I appreciate you being on and may the beard be with you.