One company gaining spectacular momentum in the healthcare technology sector is The Quantum Group (NYSE Amex: QGP). In the first quarter of fiscal year 2009, the company reported revenues of $7,363,593 compared to $2,739,475 for the same year-ago period, an increase of nearly 168%.
Why such strong growth? The company’s Renaissance Health Systems (Renaissance) division offers solutions for healthcare providers and payers by using a multi-faceted, all-encompassing approach. Renaissance manages relationships between the physicians and the payers. Renaissance cuts costs and streamlines paperwork and records while acting as a middle man for physicians and payers.
QGP has also developed and deployed PWeR(TM), which stands for “Personal Wellness electronic Record” — a cutting-edge healthcare technology platform with numerous patent-pending components. PWeR is designed to facilitate communication and exchange of patient information throughout the healthcare industry. QGP recently announced a hosting agreement with IBM for their PWeR system to facilitate IBM’s Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) solution.
PWeR can integrate all of the functions a physician/provider, hospital, clinic and related professionals utilize in one patient-centric, Web-based platform. Patient records would be accessible to any healthcare provider, reducing the possibility for misdiagnosis or other medical errors.
This sort of information implementation sounds obvious in the current Information Age — a time when any website can store your preferences and make suggestions based on the information. A person can log into their Netflix account anywhere and view their saved queue, but physicians and healthcare providers still ask if you have any allergies. In fact, the Institute of Medicine released a report in 2000 almost ten years ago announcing that handwritten reports or notes, manual order entry, non-standard abbreviations and poor legibility lead to substantial errors and injuries. It was only a matter of time before the concept of a central database of patient files would become available — and QGP realized it.
The market opportunity for QGP is tremendous. A recent study done by Dr. Ashish Jha of Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that 90 percent of hospitals do not have electronic medical records implemented. A July 2007 survey from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology found that only 14 percent of physicians even have minimally functioning electronic medical record systems.
QGP’s program falls well within the criteria for economic incentives offered by the new $19 billion Stimulus Package for healthcare information technology provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Signed into law by President Barack Obama, the ‘Stimulus Bill,’ as it is known, is intended to strengthen infrastructure by providing federal tax cuts and expansion of domestic spending on education and infrastructure. The law also mandates that hospitals and eligible professionals will suffer penalties through reduced Medicare reimbursement payments if they do not become meaningful users of electronic healthcare record users by 2015.
Additionally, The Quantum Group’s location in Florida gives it an edge over other groups attempting to fit the same niche: The healthcare industry in the state of Florida is a 100-plus billion-dollar industry, with over 56,000 licensed physicians. Population-wise, Florida today is the fourth largest state in the union and will likely be the third largest within the next decade. In the Company’s primary service areas of Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties (which correspond to the major cities of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach) there are over 20,000 physicians and a population near 5.5 million. Over 15% of this population is over the age of 65, and it is this senior population is their primary target now and in the future.
Healthcare spending in the U.S. is expected to be 17.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2009 and is showing no sign of slowing as the country enters the baby boomer retirement era. The number of people over age 65 will increase from 37 million currently to over 70 million by the year 2030. In fact, by the year 2018 healthcare spending will reach over 20% of the GDP, or $4.4 trillion.
With QGP at the forefront of making electronic medical records prevalent, you may one day never have to hear, “When was the last time you had a check up?”