To our Medac clients and colleagues:

First, I hope that you are having a pleasant holiday season with your family.  As this year draws to a close, I wanted to take this opportunity to give you a recap of this past year and our priorities for the coming year.  2009 has been our best year ever for client and employee retention.  We have solid leadership in place at all levels within the organization and are well positioned for continued success and improvement in the coming year.  Discussion of our 2009 accomplishments starts with the significant strength we added to our leadership team. After many months of looking for the perfect fit for several key positions in our management group, Brenda Jackson became our Chief Operations Officer in September and Art Cox became Chief Technology Officer in October.  Both of them bring a wealth of experience to Medac and I’m sure that you will find them to be valuable resources as you talk with them in person or by phone in the coming year.  More information about our entire management team can be found on our website at www.medac.com.

Other activities and accomplishments in 2009 include the following:
1.    To ensure that we are always able to advise clients on the latest technology and assist in implementation as needed, we established a technology assessment group that will provide recommendations for the development or acquisition of technology relating to issues important to our clients such as quality measurement and EMR;

2.    All major systems were documented and analyzed in 2009.  Workflow efficiencies in the form of process changes and software modifications have been identified and are currently being implemented;

3.    To maximize clean claim percentages, a real time Rules Engine has been integrated into the data, coding, and concurrency workflows.  Development and maintenance of rules are ongoing with thousands of tests being performed;

4.    We expanded our credit card processing capabilities to include electronic checks, recurring payments, and real time authorization of funds;

5.    In mid 2009, the conversion of all accounts to our new clearing house partner RealMed was completed.  This has expanded our capabilities with electronic remittance advice (ERA), carrier claim status, and patient eligibility integration;

6.    With the assistance and advice of clients throughout the nation, we developed a standard report package that presents all critical information relating to the practice on a monthly basis.  This report is a supplement to the custom and ad hoc reports available in the Kam system.

Throughout our history, we have maintained financial strength and stability without sacrificing our independence as a family owned company, or control of our investment decisions relating to technology and customer service.  The significant progress we have been able to achieve in 2009 is a direct result of this strategy which allows us to react quickly when there is an opportunity to improve our systems, and to changes in technology that can impact our client practices.  We are well-positioned for great success in the coming year and our plans to build on those strengths are ambitious, but at the same time exciting for all of us who are dedicated to setting new standards in the industry for quality of systems and service, transparency, integrity, reporting and performance measurement. 

Our plans and priorities for 2010 include the following:

1.    New investments in technology staff and systems will exceed $1M in this coming calendar year. This will include added capacity in our software development group, the technological redesign of the KAM system, improvements in our client web portal that will provide access to improved reporting and incorporate collections targets and other key performance indicators; and investments in hardware that will improve system reliability and security;

2.    Significant expansion of our staff training programs;

3.    Establishing an internal audit function that will be the only one of its’ kind in the industry;

4.    Setting monthly collection targets and establishing a variance reporting system for all clients using a model based on the most recent information available relating to volume, payer mix, reimbursement rates and changes in accounts receivable;

5.    Partnership with several of our physicians to develop an anesthesia quality measure system with a goal to develop and provide an efficient Clinical Quality Management framework to anesthesia groups;

6.    Continue our EMR work to provide a robust scalable integration framework that allows Medac to integrate with the major market leaders in the EMR space.

We are proud to be associated with all of our clients and physician partners, and hope that you will share our excitement about our accomplishments in 2009 and all that we have to look forward to in the coming year. We appreciate your trust in us as a business partner and assure you that we will continue to work hard to optimize our performance and make you proud to be a part of our Medac family. 

On behalf of all of us at Medac, we hope that you and your families have a very happy holiday season.

Greg