When Bill Bogdanovich, Broad Reach’s President, CEO and owner, first came to what is now a handsome health care campus in Chatham in 1987, he was 22 years old and the site looked nothing like it does now, more along the lines of “a sandpit,” he recalls.

He was hired by Liberty Commons’ founder and mentor Bill Dobson, and as Liberty Commons opened, “necessity and pressing needs” became orders of the day. “Running a facility was not something I’d done before,” he smiles, but in short order he was the administrator. “You might say that many things were thrust on me, and I didn’t say no.”

Through the 1990s, outpatient and inpatient rehabilitation were added, and the Victorian Assisted Living was developed. Hospice was launched as well.

“We were early in the industry with this kind of diversification,” Bill says. “It was always defined by what we saw as community needs. For example, we expanded short-term rehabilitation and outpatient services because we were seeing that hospital stays had become shorter, and people needed extended support to go home successfully.”

Bill has filled out his professional resume, with a Master’s in Organizational Development from Bowling Green State University, a certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management from Harvard, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Management from Bentley University. That buttresses his management experience, though as he says, “You learn that a lot of what you do, and what works, is intuitive.”

The combination keeps him atop an organization that often is caring for more than 300 people at a time; With 40 Liberty Commons’ patients in short-term rehab, another 90 residents longer term, plus 40 residents in assisted living at the Victorian, another 90 to 100 people in hospice across the Cape, and outpatient rehab that averages 20 patients a day and 25,000 visits a year.

What’s most unusual is that an entity of this size has stayed locally owned. This is a very important element for Bogdanovich, and he’s not alone: President Biden included direct mention of corporate control of health care as a national issue of rising importance during his second State of the Union address.

“There is a big push against private equity ownership of facilities like ours,” says Bill. “That structure can bring a whole different set of financial pressures that we don’t have here – and won’t, as long as I’m around. Our decisions are made in the context of what makes sense for us, not as a piece of a portfolio. I think the absence of those kinds of external pressures enables us to remain less encumbered, more responsive.”

The 22-year-old who jumped in with both feet is approaching 60. “Continuity becomes more important now,” Bill says, so he is beginning “to shift away from the day to day, and let great people here do what they’re particularly good at.” That maturity comes with another realization:

“I’m seeing patients here who are close to my age. Maybe that makes me more compassionate, I hope so. But it can give you pause as well. So developing great organizational capacity takes on a new level of importance.”