Light, brought to the interior.
Lightwell is an independent advisory for mental health practices: a partner for the operations, marketing, and leadership that sit behind the clinical work.
The name
A lightwell brings daylight to the rooms a window can't reach.
In a building, a lightwell is the open shaft architects cut down through the middle so that sunlight can fall all the way to the interior: the corridors and inner rooms that would otherwise sit in the dark. I chose the name on purpose.
The parts of a practice that keep an owner up at night tend to live in exactly those inner rooms. The billing. The credentialing. The hiring. The numbers no one has had the time to look at. My whole job is to bring light there, steadily and without drama.
There's a second meaning folded in: my own name, Misbah, means "lamp."
A few things I won't compromise on
I'm in the shared inbox
I join the way a good hire would, working inside your systems and your inbox.
I do the work
Anyone can hand you a strategy. I stay for the part where it actually gets done.
Small on purpose
I take a few practices at a time, so you work with me, not an account manager.
Healthcare-native
I already speak payer, EHR, and credentialing, so you're not paying me to learn your world.
I'll tell you the truth
A short honest answer beats a long engagement that shouldn't exist.
The founder
Built by someone who has run the back office
Lightwell was founded by Misbah Aslam, a Wellesley graduate with a master's in health services administration who has spent her career in the business of medicine. She managed the emergency medicine division at Children's Mercy, one of the country's largest pediatric hospitals, and spent several years running the operations of a Bay Area neuropsychiatry practice as its practice manager and then business director.
That last chapter is where Lightwell began. Running a mental health practice from the inside, she saw how much of an owner's week vanishes into work that has nothing to do with patients: credentialing, billing, hiring, the numbers no one has time for. She also saw how little of the help on offer actually understands the field. Lightwell is the partner she wished those practices had.
Lightwell is new as a firm, and deliberate about it: an independent advisory built on those years of running healthcare operations from inside the practice, taking a small number of engagements so the founder does the work herself.
— Misbah Aslam, MHSA · Founder · LinkedIn
Operational work I’ve handled inside practices
Let's talk about your practice
A short call, no pressure. If I can help, I'll say how.