Tuesday October 5, 8:17 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: VidaMed, Inc.
VidaMed Reports 70% Sequential-Quarter Increase in U.S. TUNA Fee-Per-Use Procedure Volume
Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan and Wisconsin Approve Medicare Reimbursement
FREMONT, Calif., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- VidaMed, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIDA - news) today reported that an estimated 256 TUNA System (Transurethral Needle Ablation) fee-per-use (FPU) procedures were performed in the U.S. during the three months ended September 30, 1999, which is up approximately 70% compared with 150 in the previous quarter. On a sequential-quarter basis, total U.S. procedure volume was up approximately 28% to 697, compared with 543 in the second quarter of 1999, and has more than tripled compared with the 225 procedures performed in the same quarter last year. Earlier this year the Company initiated a new procedure-based fee-per-use offering and a total of 26 new fee-per-use physician customers were added in the quarter, compared with 13 each in the first and second quarters this year.
Separately, the Company announced that four additional states -- Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan and Wisconsin - have approved Medicare reimbursement for the TUNA procedure effective October 1, 1999, bringing the total to 42 states.
``The increase in procedure volume and new FPU customers can be attributed to three things. First and foremost, the safety and effectiveness of the TUNA procedure; secondly, the economic opportunity our new offerings create for the urologist and the hospital; and lastly, the new sales and marketing initiatives we launched in August,' commented Randy Lindholm, President and Chief Executive Officer. ``We reorganized our selling effort into a two-pronged approach directed at both creating new TUNA fee-per-use customers and increasing the usage at existing TUNA sites. Clearly, our new customer strategy is working as we established as many new fee-per-use customer sites in the third quarter as we had during the entire first half of 1999.'
``In addition to the significant increase in fee-per-use customers, we are just beginning to see the results of our professional and consumer awareness efforts, and newly created Account Specialist utilization team.' continued Mr. Lindholm. ``We expect this trend to continue and utilization to increase as we ramp up our awareness campaigns and become increasingly more effective in our selling efforts. We firmly believe that the more someone knows about BPH and its treatment options, the much more likely they will be to choose TUNA.' |
