Why I joined Fathom: Kunal Nath

‍From time to time, Fathom invites recent hires to share their experience in deciding to join our team. In this blog, Kunal Nath, Strategic Client Advisor, tells the story of his path to healthcare through Epic and his motivation to impact coding and billing through Fathom.

Even though I've worked in healthcare for nearly my entire career now, I never anticipated its integral role in shaping my professional journey.

Let's rewind.

I was born and raised in New Delhi – unsurprisingly, I'm a massive cricket fan, and even flew to London to watch the World Cup in 2019. I grew up obsessed with cars, airplanes, and video games. Although I did have a brief foray into acting – winning the "Best Actor" title in my high school's Inter-Class Dramatics Competition – my main love was video games, especially flight simulators and racing games (in case you were wondering, my favorite game is a classic: Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit.)

Given these passions, I toyed with the idea of working in video game development, but I didn't enjoy focusing entirely on programming, so that dream fell by the wayside. But it was my appreciation for gaming that led me to study computer science – and ultimately end up in healthcare technology.

‍Path to Epic

Moving to the U.S., I received my BS in Computer Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University. Right after graduating, I joined Epic, the leading EHR platform for health systems, where I ended up staying for nearly 15 years(!).

As mentioned before, healthcare was not at the forefront of my mind when envisioning my professional journey. The biggest driver for joining Epic was the role, which focused on interoperability of systems and client success management. I knew I didn't want a job where I had to do engineering and development 24/7, and this position allowed me to merge the best of both worlds: using my technical skills and working with clients directly.

During my time there, I had the opportunity to cultivate a diverse skill set spanning services, products, and internal and external teams.

- I worked heavily on a product called Bridges, an application designed to help healthcare organizations connect and integrate their Epic EHR with external systems, gaining experience with HL7 and other data-exchange protocols.
- At any given point, I was partnering closely with 2-3 major health systems, leading their integration and data conversion efforts as they transitioned from legacy systems to Epic.
- I wore many hats during my time at Epic, including staffing lead, client success auditor, and RFP / install planner.
- I was part of a team that helped Epic become one of the first vendors to achieve Meaningful Use Stage 1 and 2 certifications!
- As a squadron lead, I oversaw a team of up to 50 integration engineers and 8 team leads on their health system projects.

‍Diving deeper with Fathom

Epic was a fantastic ride and my time there gave me an in-depth understanding of the ins and outs of system integration and interoperability. But despite that knowledge, I felt like I was only scratching the surface of healthcare and I wanted to learn more. One of the largest motivators for stepping away from Epic and ultimately joining Fathom was to broaden my understanding of healthcare, particularly coding and billing, while working from the inside of a fast-moving and impactful technology organization.

Unlike other AI companies, Fathom doesn't just chase innovation for the sake of it. Instead, it focuses on creating a solution to medical coding, something that everyone in healthcare recognizes as a huge problem. 

Since joining Fathom, some of my most meaningful moments have revolved around our deep partnerships with clients and strong culture of collaboration internally. I'll tell you about a few.

For example, one of my most fulfilling experiences was helping a major integrated health system – one of the largest provider organizations across the country – in its journey toward automating coding across multiple specialties. We worked together to build out the right specifications for this scope of work, and it was amazing to see their dedication to enhancing coding efficiency and accuracy in action.

Within Fathom, I've really valued collaborating with my Client Success and Strategy teammates to continually refine our implementation approach to better support our clients' needs and drive success. We put our heads together to develop new tools and strategies to streamline the process, ultimately enhancing and accelerating the onboarding experience for our clients.‍

Just getting started

Overall, I've loved being part of a company that's making a tangible difference in healthcare. Joining Fathom felt like stepping into a world of endless possibilities where I could strengthen my knowledge, skills, and make a difference along the way. 

I’m excited to be part of Fathom – it's been a joy to work with our health system clients and collaborate across internal teams – and I can’t wait to see what else is in store!