Founder
An operational view of what healthcare depends on.
Just The Bones was initiated by Richard Gessner, a healthcare facilities professional whose work has centered on hospital utility systems, infrastructure reliability, maintenance operations, and continuity of service.
Years spent working around the physical systems behind patient care made one fact difficult to ignore: healthcare depends on an enormous technical foundation that receives relatively little public attention when it is working correctly.
The idea for Just The Bones grew from that operational perspective and from repeated exposure to aging systems, deferred renewal, workforce constraints, disappearing institutional knowledge, and the committed people who continue holding complex facilities together.
The founder’s role is to initiate the work, articulate the mission, and help assemble the people capable of turning it into a responsible institution. The long-term objective is not a founder-centered organization. It is a durable foundation governed for the public benefit and capable of serving healthcare infrastructure beyond any one person’s tenure.