HOUSTON, Feb. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Surgical Associates in Spine’s (SASpine) Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Steven Cyr, solidifies partnership with established Houston Spine Surgeon, Dr. Stanley Jones. SASpine’s primary Houston location will now be centralized in the River Oaks District at 2311 W Alabama St.
The partnership came at just the right time, states SASpine’s CEO, LeAnn Cyr, as the San Antonio-based company had been looking for the best location in the expansive city to call home after a tumultuous last five years dealing with the unraveling of their previous practice, OSI, and formation of the newly managed SASpine.
In early 2018, Ms. Cyr made the difficult decision to dissolve OSI, a company they had built for the past twelve years. The Orthopaedic & Spine Institute (OSI) was a management company started in 2005 by Dr. Steven Cyr and LeAnn Cyr. They started operations in 2005 in San Antonio, Texas, while Dr. Cyr was still in the military. LeAnn was able to keep the company going with a full-time staff by hiring mid-level providers to triage the patients and contract pain management physicians to treat the non-operative patients. It was a gamble and certainly risky, especially during Dr. Cyr’s long deployments. LeAnn explains that without a primary surgeon for months on end, there was no telling if the patients would stay or even come, but they did. This was in large part because of Steve’s reputation as a Mayo Clinic-trained spine surgeon and his phenomenal bedside manner.
The deployments were hard on LeAnn; she had to keep the business afloat while managing the household (at the time they had two children). However, after his second deployment, Steven retired from the military and was able to walk into a full-time, thriving practice. The gamble paid off and things began to come together. LeAnn, acting Chief Operating Officer, decided to market the practice pretty aggressively through billboards, radio ads, and tv commercials, something that was not done very often in the medical field at the time. It was controversial and, again, a bit of gamble as it was very expensive, but it paid off. OSI enjoyed sustained growth for approximately 10 years averaging a 20-30% increase in annual revenue each year consecutively until early 2014.
In late 2013, LeAnn decided to step down from her role as COO of OSI to focus on her family and the adoption of their fourth child. Knowing that Dr. Cyr was busy taking care of patients, she hired a high-level Chief Executive Officer in early 2014 to take over her duties and part of Steven’s. By no fault of hers, the perfect storm commenced one year later when Victory Hospital declared Chapter 11 on June 12, 2015, in the US Bankruptcy Court. The Cyrs were minority investors in the hospital, with a substantial investment in the San Antonio location. Taking this hit financially led to disgruntled physician partners in both the hospital and the practice, which led to a mass exodus of the 10-15 contracted physicians over the course of the next 12-18 months. Consequently, Dr. Cyr was left with excess building space and a tremendous amount of over-head that he had to carry on his own, while concurrently taking care of his patients. Needless to say, it was an impossible situation as creditors hounded OSI’s upper management until a mutually agreed upon resignation of the company’s CEO put LeAnn back in the driver’s seat in 2017. Legal battles ensued and legal fees mounted to the point where LeAnn realized that there was no saving the flailing company. At the end of 2017, LeAnn made the decision to shut down operations. “Shutting down OSI was one of the most difficult decisions that I’ve ever had to make. We put our heart and soul into building it,” recalls Ms. Cyr.
In 2018, LeAnn started SASpine, and took on the role of CEO. “We started from scratch; new insurance contracts, new billing and practice management systems, new benefits, etc. I wanted a new start with no baggage,” states Ms. Cyr. With Dr. Cyr as the Chief Medical Officer, one of the first orders of business for the Cyrs was to expand offices down the I-10 corridor to Houston, Texas. Houston is one of the biggest markets in the United States and arguably the best medical community. “I felt that a presence there made the most sense for future growth and positioning,” states Ms. Cyr. So far, so good as the company is on solid ground thanks to Dr. Cyr’s continued reputation as being one of the best revision spine surgeons in the country. “We are expanding and we are growing, we have the right team in place now and I’m very confident about the future,” says Ms. Cyr. LeAnn credits much of their current success to the team she has put in place, stating, “I have an amazing Director of Administration, marketing team, and the best medical providers in the field!”
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