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Hosted by Adam Wozniak and Darren Parkinson
Gary Austin / OneCare
CEO and Co-Founder
Gary Austin is an experienced and visionary entrepreneur with 20 years of experience starting businesses, developing technology, building sales channels and raising capital. He has deep experience in the electronic payment systems industry, and has been involved in the development of unique banking and healthcare solutions, products and transaction systems.
Gary is the inventor of the patent on merchant paid cash rewards tied to credit and debit cards and is the founder and CEO of HERO, Inc., a holding company managing intellectual property in the payment-card-based, cash rewards business. At HERO, developed client relationships with some of the country’s leading financial institutions such as Citibank, Chase Merchant Services, and Discover. HERO’s Board of Directors included the chairman of MasterCard. Under Gary’s direction, HERO introduced merchant-paid cash rewards, opt-out auto enroll marketing initiatives and Omnibus-Trust-Lockbox bank accounts. Because of these initiatives, the bank, the cardholder and the merchant were finally aligned. Today almost every card-issuing bank offers merchant-paid, cash reward cards. The patent was sold to a leading credit card rewards transaction processor for $10,000,000.00 in stock plus 15% of patent proceeds.
From HERO, Gary went on to become a co-founder of Clearwave Corporation where he invented a kiosk system that enabled patients to check themselves in and out when visiting their doctors. With the swipe of a card and entry of a 4-digit pin number, the patients were checked in and insurance eligibility was verified. The Clearwave kiosk improved patient flow and cash flow for medical practices, reduced claim rejections and decreased the amount of paperwork patients needed to complete. Today millions of patient self-check-in/check-out transactions are taking place each year through Clearwave Kiosks.
In both HERO and Clearwave, Gary raised more than $15 Million in early-stage, private and venture capital investments.
After Clearwave, Gary formed Austin Capital & Consulting, Inc. Clients of Austin Capital & Consulting included innovative companies within the healthcare, technology, biometric ID and pharmaceutical industries.
In 2008, Gary became a founder of Symbionce, LLC. Symbionce is a technology and revenue cycle management company performing medical billing and collections for hospitals and clinics. At Symbionce, Gary designed a healthcare payment technology and transaction processing solution, which replaced the legacy healthcare claims payment system. This novel process creates a healthcare payment solution that works similarly to credit cards. A patent is currently pending on this process.
In 2005, Gary was chosen to receive the CEO Diversity Award by the Georgia Minority Business Leaders Association. And in 2007, Gary was selected to be a Keynote speaker and was recognized as one of the innovators of the year by the Georgia Chapter of The Healthcare Information Managers Systems Society (HIMSS), the largest healthcare technology organization in the US.
Gary is very active in his church and he enjoys music, hunting, fishing and cooking for his friends and family. Gary and his wife Reva, live in Atlanta, Georgia.
