SIMS Communications CEO Mark Bennett talks to The Wall Street Transcript
NEW YORK --(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 1999--The Wall Street Transcript has published an in-depth interview with Mark E. Bennett of SIMS Communications (Nasdaq:SIMS), in which he talks at length about his company's turnaround and its metamorphosis into an Internet-centric company.
He asserts, "I cannot tell you how excited I am about these new Internet projects. I tell people that I intend for SIMS to be the Yahoo!(R) of healthcare on the Internet, and I mean it. I intend JustMed.com to be the premiere healthcare Gateway or portal on the Internet, not only for consumers, but for healthcare industry professionals as well."
Bennett recounts, "In June, SIMS launched two major Internet business units, an Internet healthcare portal called JustMed.com that contains a home medical equipment electronic commerce store called Med Store, where consumers are able to order thousands of home medical equipment products over the Internet."
Additionally, he states, "MedCard System (SIMS' other business unit) provides a totally paperless solution to healthcare providers for performing medical insurance company billing and collection. It also provides them on-line patient medical insurance verification and eligibility data."
He continues, "Normally it takes a doctor's office 20-25 minutes to verbally verify a patient's medical insurance eligibility and co-payment status on the telephone. Using our counter-top MedCard transaction terminal or our MedCard System software running on an IBM PC-compatible computer, this verification time is reduced to an average of 12 seconds, and it provides a complete hardcopy printout of the data retrieved."
He declares, "The industry average timeframe before the Doctors receive payment is 60 to 90 days. With MedCard, payments are received in 7 to 21 days."
"As I said earlier, I want SIMS to be the Yahoo!(R) of healthcare with JustMed.com and have name brand recognition. With Med Store, with MedCard, with other health industry alliances being forged, I have the synergistic elements to make it happen. For consumers, SIMS has announced strategic business partnerships with several major Internet companies such as InfoSpace.com. Many others will follow. For the doctors, we are providing an Internet interface to the MedCard System, and which will return to JustMed.com's portal page when closed. JustMed.com provides them a healthcare search engine, medical news and other doctor-specific applications as well as general interest services such as investment information. As the premiere Internet portal for healthcare, JustMed.com receives revenues from web site advertisers looking to target Doctors and healthcare consumers, from sales of other companies' products such as healthcare books and reports, and, of course, from our own product sales through Med Store and MedCard."
Looking forward, he avows, "We shall become a major Internet player with JustMed.com. My management team and I have spent these 18 months putting the necessary pieces together and building the infrastructure. Now, as we begin to release and deploy our new products, revenues are flowing and are becoming significant, and our success stories will continue."
To read the complete interview, go to twst.com. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations. Read hundreds of free excerpts from our Q&A Interviews of analysts from top brokerage houses, money managers and CEOs at twst.com.
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CONTACT:
The Wall Street Transcript, twst.com
Barbara Diliberti, 212/952-7455
or
SIMS Communications,
Marvin Berger, 949/261-6665
TICKER: NASDAQ:SIMS
KEYWORD: NEW YORK
BW1490 JUL 13,1999
12:59 PACIFIC
15:59 EASTERN
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