Jade Potter was a child actor at Dollywood and met her biggest role model, Dolly Parton, but that's only a couple of facts on the list of impressive moments in Potter's life and career.
Potter is a former high-risk obstetrics nurse and, in 2022, transitioned to full-time lactation consulting. Her drive has made it possible for thousands of growing Knoxville families to have access to government-funded insurance for lactation care, as she is the state's first TennCare in-network independent lactation consultant.
For years, I fought for families to be able to have in-person and highly personalized lactation support covered by Medicaid. Finally, in June of 2023, I became the first independent lactation consultant in Tennessee to achieve a contract with all three Medicaid managed care organizations. Through this achievement, I was able to increase access to lactation care for thousands of the growing families in the Knoxville area who rely on state-funded insurance. Over 70% of the lactation claims billed statewide to Tennessee Medicaid plans between June 2023 and June 2024 were from East Tennessee.
With the Medicaid expansion of my practice, our patient volume increased 240% within a 12-month period. In order to accommodate this growth, I had to hire a team of administrative personnel and additional providers. Unfortunately, the first six months of insurance billing resulted in denied claims and nonpayment due to errors in the claim processing departments at each of the MCOs, as they had not been trained on how to process claims for this new state benefit. This put my company in a very dire financial situation. We are finally starting to see the other side of it.
As I recently finished my master's degree and will soon begin practice as a WHNP, I hope to extend our current services to include gynecology. I want to bring the same warm and highly personalized care we provide to our lactation clients into women's health, gender diverse health and overall wellness care. It can be difficult to provide this kind of care when relying on insurance coverage, but my goal is to figure out a system that ensures patients feel well cared-for and the financial stability needed to continue my work.
My biggest professional dream is to completely disrupt the health care system! Large, corporate medical systems do not care about individual patients, and it is leading to worse and worse outcomes as time goes on. ... By bringing health care back into communities, we can KNOW our patients, their barriers, and connect them with the resources they need. We can save lives.
During the turbulent six months of unpaid claims and exponential growth, I made the mistake of taking out several high-interest loans to float my business through. Although we are now coming out of that transition, I could not get out from underneath the ever-growing interest. Unfortunately, my husband and I had to take out a very large personal loan and use all of our savings to dig out of that situation. I wish I'd taken some business courses, but those aren't commonly recommended for nursing students.
People motivate me. I want better for them, and I want them to understand they are worth it.
The most overrated business advice I've ever heard is that the best thing for an independent practice to do is stop taking insurance and only provide self-pay services. While this may decrease the headache for me as a provider and business owner, it is a massive barrier for the populations I want to serve.
I like my co-workers to share my values.
Our entrepreneur community in Knoxville is fantastic! One area I would like to expand within this network is more support for health-related entrepreneurship because it involves many more loopholes and legalities that general businesses do not have to worry about.
Not many people know that I was a child actor at Dollywood. I've always enjoyed singing and being a part of musical theater, which I did through grade school and high school. I was even fortunate enough to meet my biggest role model, Dolly Parton!