TriVent Healthcare CEO Sam Nimah shares insights on ventilator care

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This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Sam Nimah, CEO of TriVent Healthcare, a Florida-based company that helps hospitals wean patients off ventilators. TriVent generates an average of $200,000 per bed in incremental net income for facilities.

Nimah discussed how the Covid-19 pandemic refocused attention on ventilator care, as well as the importance of improving corporate culture amid persistent, industry-wide workforce shortages.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about TriVent Healthcare and why it’s hard for hospitals to wean patients off ventilators.

Patients on mechanical ventilation pose a significant risk [and] liability for hospitals, as well as cost hospitals a lot of money. The solution that the industry has had for decades simply doesn’t work: It doesn’t get the patient off the ventilator. Patients don’t rehabilitate in the intensive care unit (ICU) very well, and sending them to long-term acute care has failed the patient, as well.

What we do is open a unit within the acute hospital. Through our tested protocols and our very specific staffing model, we’re able to liberate the patient from the ventilator much faster and with greater success than really anybody else in the industry.

Patients who are on mechanical ventilation—life support—might be in a neuro ICU or a cardiovascular ICU, or a trauma burn ICU, but nowhere do they actually get the multidisciplinary care that we provide.

We’re currently working with two hospitals in Florida and Alabama.

How did Covid affect your business? Have you seen more interest from other hospitals?

All Covid did was shine a spotlight on what we do. During Covid a lot of news outlets were saying, “If you go on a ventilator, you’re more than likely going to die.” And we were liberating Covid and post-Covid patients off ventilators at a rate greater than 90%.

We’re very, very close to more than doubling the size of the company and, from there, going further. We have several hospitals interested in many American cities, and some abroad.

What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about and why?

Covid was devastating for the industry—not only in the way it taxed the industry, but in the way it impacted the staff, the caregivers, the clinicians. It’s forced all of us, hospitals and everyone, to really look at the employee experience. We’re realizing, as an industry, that the employee has to feel safe and comfortable and good, for the patients to have a better experience. That’s been a trend that I’ve really liked seeing.

Tell me one new or old health tech product or platform that’s made your life easier, and why:

I’ve recently come across a company called Wambi. They have a really cool technology that is, in effect, a way to recognize and reward clinicians. There’s a tablet in the room; the patient or the patient’s family can select a caregiver. With a very brief survey—a couple of questions—it allows the patient to recognize a nurse for the great work that she or he does. Then, based on those survey results, it allows the hospital to see the data and reward the nurse.