Aaron Smith has started two companies and sold both. He spent nine years running Chiron Data, a software company serving disease management centers, before spending a year inside a large payer organization learning the world of biologic drugs and infusion. What he found there became FlexCare Infusion Centers — one clinic in Oklahoma City, a team of six, growing to 40 clinics across six states and around 400 people before it was acquired in 2025.

He's now building Vetriq, going after what he calls the unsexiest problem in healthcare: the paper, faxes, and PDFs arriving at every clinic that nobody has visibility into.

We covered how scaling breaks communication before it breaks operations, why hiring never got easier across 27 years of doing it, and what happens to your best people when you leave a low performer in place. Aaron doesn't hedge on any of it.

In this episode
(05:07) Nine years building software for disease management centers
(06:36) A year inside a large payer, learning infusion
(14:01) Starting FlexCare with one clinic and a team of six
(15:56) Why patients wait — or never get approved for biologics
(23:44) Payers are already running AI on prior authorization
(33:26) Six people to 400, and 40 clinics across six states
(37:25) Scaling as a communication problem
(43:31) Intelligence and grit, and why every hire is still scary
(50:13) What high performers absorb when low performers stay
(76:21) Why holding back in a hard conversation makes you the problem
(79:40) The operating system he'd recommend to any founder
(82:19) What he's building at Vetriq

About Data Clinic
Conversations with the people building and running data in healthcare, hosted by Hunter Muse of Midwest Data.

Connect with Aaron here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/1aaronmsmith/