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Dr. Michael Roman holds more than one title — besides "MD," he's also an MBA and a CEO, of his own company, no less.

An emergency room physician, Roman got an interest in preventative medicine and founded Corporate Health America on the fourth floor of the Little Rock Cardiology Clinic building in west Little Rock.

The idea comes from Dallas, Roman's hometown, and he wanted to bring the concept to Little Rock, his home since 1989.

"They have a place called Cooper Clinic," Roman, who is also a patient there, said. "My whole family has been going to Cooper for decades and there is nothing up here like that."

So that gave Roman an idea, but he knew he needed some education first.

"So I went back and got my MBA, to learn a little about business and how to run
a business," he explained.

UALR has an executive MBA program and part of the process is that the graduate students form teams and come up with projects that they develop a business plan for and forecast how it would do.

Roman's idea was a good one; "it won all the awards," he noted, and it beat out what is now Omnibalm, the lotion company founded by UAMS pharmaceutical professor Dr. Bill Gurley. But it wasn't that it won; the other MBA students thought it was viable. "Everybody really liked our project and it was like, 'Why don't you do this?' … And that's really how it started," he recalled.

The clinic opened last summer and while Roman was hesitant to release specifics, he did say that business was good.

Back in the Beginning
Roman first came to Arkansas as part of his residency and has been here ever since. He went to Texas for his undergraduate degree, Creighton for his medical degree, and did another part of his residency in Denver. Creighton, the Jesuit school in Omaha, Neb., has recently been in the news in Arkansas, but unlike Dana Altman and his one-day tenure, Roman is now working on year 18 of his in-state residency.

Roman still works in the ER at the medical center on the UAMS campus and like ER physicians everywhere, he has stories to share.

"I've done 64 hours before," Roman said of one shift. "That wasn't fun at all and that was in Paris, Texas."

With his medical training and ER experience, Roman came to some conclusions.
"I always said 80 percent of what I see can be prevented," he said. "In the ER, it's 90 percent because a lot of it is from drugs or violence.

"I'm the kind of guy who hates waste. I hate to see people waste their lives. People can be younger, healthier, more active and be not be bound by their disease. It's real frustrating."


Back to the Present
Now in business for nearly a year, Roman occupies a corner office in a clinic that that has the look and feel of something that isn't a healthcare facility.
Maybe it is the flat screen TVs or the plush couches in the lobby, or maybe it is something else, something you can actually put your nose to. While a clinic, Corporate Health America doesn't have that clinical, hospital "smell."

"Thank you," Roman said, with a laugh. "That's funny. Everybody who walks in here says that."

The work is serious business though.

"We are about taking people and showing them what their risks are," Roman said. "And having them do something now, so it isn't catastrophic later."

But is the system stacked against preventative medicine?

"It's hugely stacked," Roman said. "Insurance doesn't pay for prevention. Health insurance is a misnomer; there is no insurance for health … we are insuring your good health if you comply with these exams and comply with the nutrition, the fitness and the education you get, also the coaching, the stress coaching that you get. That's the only insurance you can do."

Roman sees Corporate Health America filling what is a much needed role in Arkansas.

"We are that missing link," he said. "We are the link between the employees and the insurance companies. They are bound to cover them for medical, but they need someone to decrease their claims. It is a money decision for them, but it is a productivity thing for the companies. So we are that missing entity that people are looking for."

Roman then turned the tables and instead of answering questions, he asked one of his own. "How much do you spend on cable?"

Well, while the cable in Little Rock might be "Comcastic," it is still too much.
"We did a price comparison to what cable costs," Roman said. "We showed that for a $60 or $70 bill, you could do a program with us for $85 a month."

While getting a bunch of channels is dandy, you can't watch TV when you are dead.

"If you talk about your life, that's all you get. Right?" Roman said. "Without your health, you have nothing. … What is it worth to keep you healthy at 55?
"Well, it works out to pennies."


May 2007

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