Why I joined Fathom: Luke Anthony Peña

‍From time to time, Fathom invites recent hires to share their experience in deciding to join our team. In this blog, Luke Anthony Peña, VP of Sales and Talent Recruiter, tells the story of how his passion for healthcare, inspired by his mother’s journey as a doctor, led him from higher education to Fathom.

The seeds for my journey to Fathom were planted when I was eight years old.

When I was eight, my mother returned to college to pursue her dream of caring for others as a doctor. I had a front-row seat in a classroom — sometimes literally — that offered many lessons: how to set a goal and pursue it, how to work incredibly hard, how higher education can be a path to a new life, and how important healthcare and good medical care are for our families, our communities, and our society.

Over the years, I celebrated my mother’s dream coming true and her move into clinical practice. I also heard from her the unfortunately familiar stories about administrative inefficiencies that got in the way of what she loved most: providing high-quality care to patients. The level of her frustration matched the complexity of the challenges at hand, not the least of which was the divergent and sometimes conflicting incentives of clinical care and revenue cycle management.

I spent the first decades of my career in higher education, serving academic communities – including those at Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth, and USC – motivated by my mother’s experience as I equipped our brightest young minds with the tools to improve our world.  

Improving healthcare with Fathom

When I decided to shift my career, I saw a chance to honor her example by working with solutions addressing the complex issues in healthcare that affect providers, patients, and payers alike. Fathom is one of those solutions.

I found myself drawn to the good work here for two reasons.

First, the opportunity for lasting positive impact in medical coding is both tremendous and timely, especially as we make exponential gains in our ability to build both the efficacy of AI tools and our understanding and willingness to leverage them.

Second, and no less important, the extraordinary caliber of people shaping Fathom’s trajectory, from the leadership team to the most junior colleagues, is an inspiration to me and absolutely integral to ensuring that our successful solution will endure and achieve maximum impact.

I have the good fortune of serving both our sales and talent teams, which are ultimately two sides of the same coin: I either create opportunities for others to contribute to building our solution, or I help clients discover how they can benefit from using it.

No matter which hat I wear at a given moment, I am ultimately honoring my mother’s example, tackling healthcare complexity by advancing the leading autonomous medical coding solution in the market and creating better outcomes for our families, our communities, and our society.