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After high school and one year of community college, Rick enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served on active duty aboard the USS Glover as a radar man. Rick then enrolled at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and, while also working full-time at a local grocery store, he made his first significant foray into the business world by buying two Kansas City doughnut shops for his mother to manage.
Following graduation from UMKC with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, Rick earned a law degree from Southern Methodist University. He stayed in Dallas, working for the city’s largest law firm, Johnson & Swanson, primarily representing companies in the health care, oil and gas and communication industries. His specialization was in health care mergers and acquisitions and it was during his work on these transactions that he recognized how patients could be better served by improving hospital efficiency, which would lead to lower costs and better outcomes.
In the spring of 1987, while still practicing law, Rick put together a six billion dollar finance package and made an offer to purchase HCA, Inc. When the offer was rejected, Rick started Columbia with his entire life savings of $125,000.
Beginning with two El Paso, Texas hospitals and continuing for the next nine years, Columbia purchased hospitals and instituted practices that made them more efficient, allowing patients to pay less while receiving better outcomes. In 1994, Rick made a successful bid for HCA, Inc., which at that time owned approximately 100 hospitals, and the company’s name changed to Columbia/HCA. By the end of 1995, Rick had added 80 more hospitals to the network, primarily in rural communities, and implemented his signature cost-saving practices throughout the organization.
Some of Rick’s most successful reforms significantly improved patient care and enabled Columbia/HCA to take a leadership role in reducing death rates after bypass surgery. Reforms included an innovative system of ranking Columbia’s almost 100 open heart programs across the country for mortality. He also created efficient ways to reduce waste and streamline procedures. In the ten years he operated Columbia, supply costs went down from over 16.8% percent of revenue per year to less than 13.5% percent per year.
As Columbia/HCA’s cost-savings measures spread across the industry, consumers also benefited – especially when it came to health care costs and health insurance premiums. In 1989, just a year after Columbia purchased its first hospital in El Paso, health care inflation was over 18 percent per year. By 1996, health care inflation had dropped to just 0.8%, while wages rose by 3.3% that same year.
Under Rick’s leadership, Columbia had a “best demonstrated practices” group that constantly worked on ways to reduce costs, improve outcomes and benefit patients. Columbia’s success also resulted in approximately two billion dollars in funding for charitable foundations, many of which focus on ways to improve health care in America.
In 1997, Columbia was recognized by Business Week as one of the 50 Best Performing Companies of the S&P 500. TIME magazine praised Columbia resoundingly: “Scott’s credo is a classic: quality care doesn’t have to come at a premium price. But it’s the way Scott is accomplishing that goal that is transforming how American hospitals do business. In an industry notorious for waste and inefficiency, Scott aggressively consolidates operations and imposes cost controls.”
When Rick left Columbia in 1997 at the age of 44, it was one of the most admired companies in America. It had grown to become the world’s largest health care company with more than 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers, and 550 home health locations in 37 states and two foreign countries. Columbia’s annual revenues exceeded $20 billion, and it employed more than 285,000 people, making it the 7th largest U.S. employer and the 12th largest employer worldwide. Though Columbia owned only five percent of the hospitals in the country in 1997, the company operated more than a quarter of the Top 100 Hospitals in America, as ranked by Mercer/HCIA.
In late 1997, Rick purchased a controlling interest in America’s Health Network, which later merged with Fox Entertainment to become The Health Network and later Discovery Health. In June 1998, America’s Health Network showed the first live birth on the Internet. In 2001, Rick co-founded Solantic Corporation, which operates unique and innovative urgent care centers across Florida. These centers provide urgent care for patients with no insurance, patients who cannot get in to see their personal physician or patients who prefer not to go to the emergency room for less serious health care needs. Solantic was the first urgent care center operator to have menu boards similar to Starbucks, listing all prices up front.
Solantic also serves workers who have been injured on the job, and those in need of routine physicals, immunizations and flu shots.
Solantic also has a Three-Day Feel Better Guarantee. Patients whose condition has not improved three days after their initial Solantic visit have the opportunity to return to be treated for free.
In July 2007, Solantic completed a deal to expand the company into Wal-Mart Super Centers in Florida, and the company now has 27 locations across Florida.
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