MEET THE OWNER

Martin J. Farrell

The most generous people I have ever met were the poverty-stricken Brazilians I encountered on a missions trip I took in 1992. It amazed me to see people who had so little giving us whatever they did have to welcome us to their village. That made an impression on me that has stayed with me until this day because it goes against what we typically experience with scarcity.

In our own homes or businesses, when we start making less money, we tend to stop giving. We revise our budgets. We cut out what we deem unnecessary. And what we sometimes lose in that process is generosity. The medical industry is not immune to this phenomenon. In a time of lower reimbursements and uncertainty of the things to come, our first reaction is to look for ways to cut. The result tends to be a change in the patient experience and the customer service levels – impacting the welcome, the generosity that should exist in the care of patients.

Soon after that trip I started college and began working at a company called Fonar Corporation to help pay for school. The inventor of the MRI, Raymond Damadian, MD, started that company to manufacture the first MRI scanner. Working at the company that changed the way we diagnose and ultimately treat patients inspired me. Getting to walk around the halls of a company that made such a contribution to medicine filled me with a purpose to do more than just average or good work.