A Framework for Impact: How a Business Operating System Helps Healthcare Innovators Grow

There’s nothing like the thrill of starting a business.

The energetic spark that comes from a new idea. The rush of landing your first customer. The pride of solving a problem that others didn’t know existed.

When you’re in an industry like healthcare, those ideas, customers and problems are human-centered, making the stakes higher and the impact greater. To add to these inherent pressures, the industry’s complex and ever-evolving landscape isn’t the most hospitable to most entrepreneurs.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
-James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

To conquer the terrain, your business needs a roadmap to stay focused and nimble. Because if you don’t have the right systems in place, you’ll get lost in the twists and turns.

That’s where a business operating system comes in.

What a Business Operating System Is and Why You Need One

Running a business without a system is a lot like driving to an unfamiliar destination without navigation: you may get there eventually, but it will be slow, inefficient and full of avoidable wrong turns.

A business operating system (BOS) creates a repeatable framework for running and growing your business. It organizes the key components of your business (people, processes and priorities) into a single system, providing clarity on what drives success and a structure for executing consistently.

Rather than relying on instinct, a business system helps you define how work gets done, who is responsible and how success is measured, creating a foundation for sustainable growth. By following the primary components of a business system, you’ll begin to understand how your business runs and see traction as a result. Here’s how it works:

1. Vision and Strategy Provide Clarity and Alignment: By defining your company’s vision and priorities, everyone knows where to focus. With everyone rowing in the same direction, decisions can be made faster.
2. Roles and Responsibilities Strengthen Accountability: When roles and responsibilities are clear, each team member knows what success looks like and where they fit in. With empowered teams, bottlenecks disappear and initiatives move forward with the right
3. Metrics and KPIs Make Data Actionable: Visible dashboards and scorecards take the guesswork out of performance. With real-time insights, issues can be spotted earlier and opportunities captured faster.
4. Surfacing Issues Accelerates Problem-Solving: A simple framework to surface, discuss and solve issues means problems don’t simmer for weeks on end. Frequent and dedicated opportunities to talk through issues allow you to spend less time reacting and more time innovating.
5. Standardized Processes Create Efficiency: When processes are not only documented but followed and shared, consistency and efficiency follow. With predictability, teams can maintain quality even as volume increases. Leaders can accurately forecast growth, needs and capacity.
6. Action Creates Scalability: Big goals are broken up into clear and measurable priorities, turning vision into action. This helps a business grow by creating focus, consistency and follow-through to ensure great ideas don’t just stay on paper but drive real progress.

Why Founders Resist and Why That’s a Miss

While a business operating system can be a game-changer for healthcare companies, some leaders are still hesitant to adopt one. Here are the most common objectives I hear:

• “We’re too small for that.”
• “Our business is unique; that structure wouldn’t fit.”
• “We don’t have time to stop and plan. We need to keep moving.”

These concerns are understandable, but the reality is that any team, big or small, can benefit from clarity, focus and consistent execution. There’s no business that an operating system can’t support. In addition to bringing tangible, positive results to a wide variety of healthcare companies at all stages of growth, I’ve seen it used successfully in dental offices, restaurants and family-run organizations.

The structure actually frees your team to move faster because everyone knows exactly what matters most. Operating systems are designed for simplicity: 90-day priorities to generate focused momentum, weekly check-ins to solve issues fast and measurable metrics to track progress.

The above aren’t reasons to wait; they’re reasons to act. Done correctly, the benefits of implementing an operating system are almost immediate, helping your team scale consistently and profitably.

An Example of Early Struggle

Phase Medical joined the CQuence Health portfolio when it launched in 2021 as a secondary online market for used medical equipment. The company has leveraged CQuence’s strategic guidance, professional services and investment capital to scale faster and overcome the uncertainties of being a disruptive technology start-up.

During the company’s first three years, Phase Medical faced significant headwinds and, like many start-ups, had to find its way out of the early struggles of entrepreneurship. They experimented with different product lines and customer segments while simultaneously creating a digital marketplace to bring buyers and sellers together.

By 2024, Phase Medical was struggling to gain traction. The company was burning through cash and unable to build a customer base in two of its business channels. But there was a glimmer of success within Phase’s medical imaging trade desk segment. The company’s board of directors determined that Phase Medical needed to adopt a business system to operate the company and create a laser focus on that segment of the business.

A Proven Record of Success

With CQuence’s guidance, Phase Medical adopted a business operating system, which brought speed and clarity to the team’s commitments. It lessened the friction, delays and rework that often plague a start-up.

CQuence’s business system implementation created a performance dashboard that gives leaders a clear line of sight to the outcomes required for success. It simplified, decentralized and pushed authority to the front-line so the team could solve issues and problems quickly.

In 2025, Phase Medical is forecasted to be cashflow positive for the first time in the company’s brief four-year history, with its booked and billed revenue growing 56% from 2024 to 2025.

Phase’s growth didn’t come from adding more projects or working harder. It came from getting clear on what mattered most and executing with discipline. It’s proof that structure creates freedom. And even smaller teams can accomplish big goals when they operate from a shared system and vision.

Partnering for Growth

At CQuence Health, we partner with healthcare leaders to navigate the challenges faced by emerging businesses. We work alongside entrepreneurs to clarify their strategy, setting them up for success. And we care about their success because we share the same passion: improving healthcare.

Our team has decades of healthcare experience and we’ve seen firsthand how the most talented teams struggle without the right systems in place. And we know exactly how to implement one in a way that will work for your business.

If you’re ready to make decisions faster and start scaling your business, a business operating system is the ideal first step.