Originally from Pensacola, Florida, Davian Santana joined the United States Navy after graduating high school. His academic excellence at the Naval School of Health Sciences enabled Santana to become an advanced medical laboratory technician and, later, a medical technologist.After being honorably discharged from the Navy, Santana worked at an Alabama hospital for a few years, before relocating to Florida. There he worked for Beckman Coulter, installing and validating medical equipment. In doing his job, Santana got to see the internal operations of many laboratory facilities across the state. That’s when he began to notice an ongoing lack of personalized care, compounded by high prices and long wait times (both for the patient’s on-site wait time and for their results to be delivered).
Davian Santana
“The patient was not being put first. Likewise, neither were the physicians or the facilities who depended on those labs to deliver timely and accurate results,” Santana says. “Everywhere I looked, it was another upside-down paradigm—another case of ‘the tail wagging the dog.’ ” Santana had seen firsthand that, although many clinical laboratories talked about patient-focused care, most labs did not deliver with the hard work and dedication it took to create such an experience. “I began to think to myself,” Santana says, “’I’m bringing to life all these labs for other companies – why not bring to life a lab of my own?’” Santana began to envision an opportunity in the existing market—for a focus truly based on service, value, and timely accuracy.Working around the clock, Santana continued working as clinical systems engineer by day before putting in another shift every night at what would later become Vista. Leveraging his home, assets, and time to bring his vision to life, Santana put everything he had into building his laboratory by hand. Santana realized his vision when Vista Clinical Diagnostics was incorporated in July 2003 and opened its doors for business in January 2004. Headquartered in Clermont, Florida, Vista Clinical is currently contracted with over 230 skilled nursing homes and services assisted living facilities throughout Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Indiana. Clinical specimens are tested at the state-of-the-art, 35,000 square foot facility in Clermont, as well as laboratories in Lake City and Danville, VA. The current clinical laboratory services offered include pathology and a variety of blood tests – the scope of which include chemistry, coagulation, immunochemistry, hematology, microbiology, molecular testing, serology, urinalysis, and molecular testing. Vista also has a Microbiology Department with a full test menu and excellent turnaround time on all testing. The company is fully licensed by the State of Florida with full accreditation through CAP.Based on the ethics of higher quality healthcare, at an affordable price, with excellent service, Davian Santana has grown his vision from a little laboratory in Minneola, Florida to the outstanding corporation it is today.
We sought to bring humanity back to an industry that has become a commodity – Davian Santana
Key Differentiators
Having been built upon the ethics of higher-quality health care at affordable prices – with excellent service, Vista has been consistently rewarded, allowing Santana’s first little laboratory in Minneola, Florida to progressively expand across the Southeastern and Northeaster United States. Offering some Zen-like insight into their tremendous growth, Santana simply says: “What’s good for our patient is what works for us.” In other words, Vista has grown by choosing to provide better service.“Whenever a patient or client wants better service, they choose Vista,” says Pat Owen, Vice President of Operations. “Our success story is told through the lives we’ve touched and the beliefs that have changed in our patients, who now think: Not only is Vista the better choice, Vista is really trying to make a difference with their quality of care. Our retention rate is extremely high, and we earn that honor every day.”
In the very beginning, Vista recognized how impersonal lab work had become. “We took something that was unfeeling and clinical,” Owen says, “and brought back humanity to it. This comes from the top and trickles all the way down. For example, one of our elderly patients, with the onset of dementia, was having a hard time. The daughter called to ask if anyone could be sent to the home as her mother was having difficulty getting up. Our phlebotomist did not hesitate in going to the home and obtaining the sample. People caring for people: That’s what it’s all about.”“Our patients and clients also help determine where we go, and what we change,” Santana adds. “At Vista, we affect one patient at a time, and, when we’re successful with that one patient: Mission accomplished. When we do that for 6,000 to 7,000 patients a day: Mission accomplished.”
