Apria Healthcare Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Debby Morris describes herself as partner to the chief executive, going beyond a chief financial officer’s typical role to develop strategy and key initiatives and driving growth and profitability.
“Nowadays it’s more common,” she said, referring to CFOs taking on responsibilities beyond number crunching.
“But it wasn’t the case 15 years ago when I started.”
Morris is the winner of the Business Journal’s CFO of the Year award in the private company category (see profiles, pages 4, 5, 6 and 8). She helped Apria, a leading home respiratory services provider with 7,000 employees, achieve a compounded annual growth rate of 14% from 2014 to 2017, despite compressed reimbursement rates.
Nameless, Rankless
Morris said teamwork is one of her underlying principles. “It sounds cliche, but I truly believe you are only as good as your team.”
She oversees a core team of about 100 comprised of financial and nonfinancial talent, such as traditional accounting, taxes, treasury, sales and operations, real estate and medical analytics. She encourages team members to exchange ideas in a “nameless, rankless” environment where, “Forget that I am the CFO and you are accounting manager or project manager. If you have content knowledge or expertise, I want you to share it.”
The method came from the military—designed to allow officers to speak without fear of judgment or repercussions—and was introduced to corporations by an Air Force fighter pilot who founded Atlanta-based Afterburner Inc. to help companies address problems with communication.
“I am not a leader who’s afraid of people smarter than me. I love for people to shine, flourish and help them move throughout their career,” Morris said. She said she’s “naturally wired for both results and relationships” and that the latter is about “communicating honestly, openly and directly.”
Apria generated $1.2 billion in revenue in 2016. It’s majority-owned by New York-based private equity firm Blackstone Group. The company, in addition to home respiratory services, provides medical equipment, including oxygen and inhalation therapies sleep apnea treatment and wound therapy.
Morris helped separate its infusion and respiratory business segments, selling the infusion business to CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS) in 2014 for $2.1 billion.
Data Analytics
She said she believes in the power of analytics and that when she joined Apria, one of her main priorities was to build a lean data analytics team to bring visibility to operating and financial metrics for clearer, better decision-making.
“The financials are always the result of what everybody does, but they don’t necessarily provide a lot of insight into what led to that result,” Morris said. She said bringing in data analytics—such as incorporating cloud-based technology that lets everybody in the organization see consistent data rather than unaligned, separate databases and spreadsheets—allows Apria to not only show financial results, but also aids in the decisions that spurred the results.
Changes also include providing real-time key metrics to operating managers throughout the organization and modifying the sales incentive compensation program. Apria achieved double-digit sales growth across all product lines last year.
The healthcare-reform reduction in reimbursement rates, coupled with an increase in self-pay for services, means growth in home healthcare.
“It’s very difficult to predict what our nation’s healthcare [system] 10 years from now will look like, but home is the place where people want to be. It is also the lowest-cost setting,” Morris said. “For us in healthcare, there’s no turning back in the shift to value-based care—providing the best outcomes with the best quality at a lower cost.”
Nonissue
Morris has broad industry experience beyond healthcare, including, professional services, automotive, business process outsourcing and real estate. She served as the first female controller at CBRE Group Inc. in the 1980s. When asked if she felt challenges as a woman in a leadership role, she said she’s never made her gender an issue.
“I’ve worked in a male-dominated role all my life, whether it’s then or now, and I’ve never made it an issue, which makes it a nonissue,” Morris said. “I will never not act like a female—30 years ago maybe some women felt like they have to act like a man … I want to help more women remain with their careers, but I also recognize sometimes people don’t want to.”
Motherhood is a big part of Morris’ life. She said it was no question it was hard to balance a career and raising twins—a boy and girl, age 26.
“You can do both,” she said. “Somebody will tell you, ‘You can’t be a good mother,’ but you can be a good mother. It’s not about time to me, it’s about quality time spent with your children.”
Morris, whose parents separated when she was young, said her father “gave her the drive and taught her that she could do anything,” while her mother gave her the gift of time.
She also credited her husband, her “No. 1 cheerleader.”
Work Hard
Morris said her advice to young professionals is to “find what you like to do and always work hard at it. Hard work pays off.”
And for those who don’t know what they want to do, she said that’s OK, too. “Don’t worry about it. It will come to you. Just find something you enjoy doing.”
Morris is a former national freestyle skiing competitor and remains an avid skier. She has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Colby Sawyer College in New Hampshire.
