Listening to the Renal Care Community: An Update From Renvio’s CEO, John Hickey
Last week, Renvio’s leadership team had the opportunity to spend time with Puget Sound Kidney Centers, one of the many customer conversations John Hickey is enjoying as he begins his tenure as CEO.
The visit was a timely reminder of something that can be easy to say, but sometimes difficult to practice well: technology must be shaped by the people who use it every day. Renal care teams manage complex, deeply coordinated work, and the best way to understand where technology can help is to listen directly to the people delivering care, running clinics, supporting patients, dealing with compliance – the people who are solving our industry’s problems in real time.
That is the spirit behind Part 2 of this three-part Q&A series. After introducing why he joined Renvio and how he plans to spend his first 30 days, John now turns to the community Renvio serves: the clinicians, operators, customers, partners, and renal care leaders helping him better understand where focus matters most.
In this conversation, John shares what he is noticing about renal care as a specialized area of healthcare, why complexity is only part of the story, and how customer conversations are shaping the way he thinks about Renvio’s role in the market.
Q: How are you thinking about renal care as a specialized area of healthcare?
JH: What stands out to me is how connected everything is. Patients come in multiple times a week. Care teams manage long-term relationships with deeply personal stakes. Documentation requirements are detailed and consequential. The decisions made on any given day affect both the patient in the chair and the clinic's ability to keep running.
The margin for error is very small. That means the systems supporting this work cannot be generic. They have to reflect the reality of the work, not a simplified version of it.
The thing that drew me to Renvio above everything else is that the team here understands renal care in a way that takes years to build. That depth is rare, and in a field this specialized it matters. I am spending my first 30 days listening closely, and that means listening everywhere. To the people here, who bring that expertise every day. To customers, who depend on this technology to run their clinics and care for their patients. And to the broader renal care community, where the most honest signal about where focus matters tends to come from the people doing the work.
Q: What are you noticing about the challenges renal care organizations are facing?
JH: It would be easy to say the challenge is complexity. But these organizations are not new to complexity. They manage it every day and they are good at it.
What I am paying attention to is where complexity creates unnecessary friction. Where are teams spending time finding information that should be easy to find? Where are people reconciling things manually that a better system would handle automatically? Where have workarounds become so normal that nobody questions them anymore?
Those are the places where the right technology makes a real difference. Not because technology solves everything, but because removing friction gives strong teams more room to focus on the patients in front of them.
Q: How are you thinking about customers during this transition?
JH: Customers are at the center of how I am thinking about this job.
I want to hear directly from them. What is working well. Where we are falling short. What they need from us that they are not getting today. The best signal on where to focus is not a board presentation or a market report. It is a conversation with a clinical director who tells you what their day actually looks like.
I have already had several of those conversations and I plan to keep having them. Every clinic visit, every customer call, every piece of feedback shapes how the whole team thinks about what we build and how we support the people using it.
Q: Renvio is focused on the U.S. market today, but kidney care is a global challenge. How are you thinking about that?
JH: Our focus today is on the U.S. market and the providers we serve here. That focus matters. We need to execute well, support our customers well, and keep building from a strong foundation.
At the same time, kidney care is not a uniquely American problem. Patients need support, clinicians need better tools, and care organizations face real operational challenges in every country. Our team recently attended the World Congress of Nephrology, and we left with more questions than answers, which is usually a good sign. Different markets have different reimbursement models and care delivery structures, but the commitment to patients is the same everywhere.
We are proud of what Renvio does in the U.S. and the providers we serve here. We are also paying attention to what the broader renal care community is working on and learning from those conversations.
Q: What do you want customers and partners to know?
JH: That the team at Renvio is focused on serving you well.
My goal in the first 30 days is to understand this community well enough to make good decisions. Not to arrive with a predetermined agenda, but to listen carefully and earn the right to lead.
I look forward to meeting more customers and partners directly. If you want to share your perspective on where Renvio can do better, or where we are already doing something right, I welcome you to reach out.