Andy Garlington on the Windshield Approach to Healthcare

Andy Garlington moved his family to Arizona during the pandemic because he wanted additional hospital experience. It would mark his first CFO tenure, and while he was lured away by Access TeleCare just a year later, Garlington’s inaugural hospital CFO experience tells you everything you need to know about what makes him a great leader, even if he may not believe it quite yet.

“I learned so much during what wound up being a pretty short period of time,” Garlington says. “I tried to make each department in the hospital my office for a week. I sat in the emergency room for a week. The same with neuro, radiology, the ICU, health information management (HIM), and so on. I wanted to break down barriers, and I was willing to ask a lot of dumb questions to do so. The feedback I got was, ‘We didn’t even know the previous CFO’s name, so I felt like maybe I was doing something right.”

The current CFO at Access TeleCare succinctly sums up his approach. “Humility always wins.” But with over seventeen years of experience in healthcare finance and operations, the CFO also possesses an incredibly deep well of knowledge.

Presently, Garlington oversees the financial strategy and operational efficiency of a company that delivers telehealth services to hospitals across all fifty states.

Access’s expertise in telehealth is much more than the from-home appointments many of us encountered first during the pandemic. Access TeleCare specializes in acute specialty medicine, serving patients within hospital walls rather than from home. The distinction, Garlington notes, was initially counterintuitive even to him, but it underscores the company’s unique value proposition: addressing the shortage of specialty providers and supporting underserved communities.

Telehealth has been statistically proven to reduce the need for patient transfers, improve care outcomes, and support the financial stability of hospitals.

“Over 80% of our patient population qualifies as an underserved population,” the CFO explains. “They’re either in a rural location where they don’t have access to specialty care, or they’re part of a patient population that has consistently been overlooked by the healthcare system at large. I think anyone working in healthcare wants to make a difference. That can be hard to see in a financial role at times, but not here. You see it every single day.”

At present, Access TeleCare is part of roughly 20 percent of all US hospitals, including nineteen of the top twenty-five largest health systems. The organization’s partnership with those health systems includes addressing conditions that disproportionately affect rural populations.

Garlington’s responsibilities extend beyond traditional financial stewardship. The CFO is instrumental in fostering growth, optimizing cost structures, and ensuring that the organization remains agile and responsible to evolving healthcare needs. His approach is both forward-looking and grounded in the operational rigor of his past experiences. He likens Access TeleCare and its approach to the windshield of a car.

“You’ve got a rearview mirror, and you’ve got a windshield,” Garlington explains. “Access TeleCare is the windshield. It’s looking ahead, and it’s so much larger than the rearview mirror. We look back so much in healthcare at what worked well in the past. And that is important. But we need to be figuring out how to leverage technology, a limited amount of resources and providers, and some vision to see how we can make healthcare better in the future.”

The CFO is frank that he never imagined himself in this seat. The C-suite, as a whole, still doesn’t feel like a natural fit. Garlington says the C-suite leaders he encountered in his previous roles all seemed to be wise beyond their years and in possession of endless expertise and knowledge. He still feels a little unsure that he belongs in that league, but over time, he realized that all of his experiences add up to something greater.

“At some point, I just had to accept that I had been stacking experience after experience,” the CFO says. “There were lessons learned in every single one. I made a lot of mistakes, and I hope I learned from each one of those as well. But eventually, you just realize that whatever doubt you have, there’s usually an experience in your past that lets you know that whatever the challenge is, you’ll find a way to tackle it.”

“Challenge” is the key word here. Garlington dislikes being asked where he’ll be or what he’ll be doing in five years. His answer is always the same: He goes where the challenge is. The approach comes down to the same humility that has gotten him where he is today.

“No matter what I’m doing, I believe in having a strong team around me that knows a lot more than I do,” Garlington says. “Success is defined by the people around you. I strive to make them better, and I know they sure make me better.”