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The Quantum Group, Inc. (QTUM) |
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CEOCFO
Interview Index |
This is a printer friendly page! The
Quantum Group’s new generation solutions in outsourcing services for physicians and
healthcare organizations include privacy consulting, managed care contracting, government
compliance and leading edge technology solutions BIO: 1990-1995. Mr. Guillama has been member of the
American College of Health Care Executives, Medical Group Management Association. In
addition, Mr. Guillama is also currently a Director of TargitInteractive, Inc. of
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a provider of interactive marketing. Mr. Guillama serves a
director of the Florida International University Foundation. Based in Miami, Florida, FIU
has 34,000 students, 1,100 full-time faculty, and 95,000 alumni, making it the largest
university in South Florida and placing it among the nation's 30 largest colleges and
universities. The Quantum Group, as the
parent company, provides outsourcing to physicians and healthcare organizations. Our
services include: privacy consulting, human resources management, managed care
contracting, government compliance, financial management, facilities management, venture
management, and healthcare venture/merchant banking. The company has identified potential
acquisitions to give it a core group of services, such as medical billing and collections,
consulting and financial services. The Quantum Medical
Technologies (QMT) team has spent 4 years in the development of technology systems to
increase the efficiency of the healthcare system. The company has in development three
PATENT PENDING business processes. The Renaissance Health Systems
(RHS) is organized as a new breed, next generation, Community Health System (CHS),
contracting with Florida health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to manage the care of
patients in a proactive and cost effective environment. RHS has secured an agreement with
one Florida HMO, is currently in negotiations with two other Florida HMOs, and is
continuing talks to seek other contracts and acquisitions in this field. CEOCFOinterviews: Mr.
Guillama, will you tell us a little about your background and how the Quantum Group got
started? Mr. Guillama: “My background for the last fourteen years has been in healthcare and in the healthcare management field. I started my healthcare career as Director of Operation and subsequently became COO of a 36-man multi-specialty medical practice with numerous medical facilities in Miami Dade County, Florida. Afterwards I became vice president of a multi-billion dollar practice management organization based in Birmingham, Alabama. Eight years ago, I started my own company in practice management, which grew from $200,000 revenues in 1996 to about $119 million dollars in revenue in January of 2000. The company, Metropolitan Health Networks (OTCBB: MDPA) at the time was revolutionary in its business plan which migrated from providing outsourcing services using a management service organization to HMOs. However, in time, I realized the need for a new approach that combined both the at risk practice management and efficient operation of medical facilities with actual medical management using evolving technology, as well as providing an option to outsource different components of the medical business from healthcare providers. This evolution led me to leave the company I founded and start on a new revolutionary and updated model. That project is now the Quantum Group, Inc." CEOCFOinterviews: There are several operating divisions in Quantum Group. Will you tell us how that is broken down? Mr. Guillama: “First let me be clear, we are still a development stage company with all the risk and cautions associated. The Company is primarily in the outsourcing business. There are three components, which are very complimentary but stand on their own. The company’s main business is the outsourcing of services like privacy consulting, management consulting and strategic venture management. We started with the education of professionals on the implementation of The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). HIPAA has placed a tremendous burden on the entire healthcare industry, but disproportionately on physicians because they generally do not have the staff or the ability to familiarize themselves with the regulations and stay in compliance. Supporting those basic offerings is managed care contracting, where we intend to help physicians optimize their current contractual relationship with managed care organizations or HMOs. We are also adding the services of billing/collections, and benefit/employee administration in the future. We have a division called Renaissance Health Systems that we intend will provide patient care to the member of HMOs. In a typical scenario, an HMO would contract with our company to manage and coordinate the care of a certain amount of patients in a particular region. We coordinate the care, create and expand the network as well as facilitate the disease management of those patients on behalf of the HMO. We are in the process of developing proprietary technology that would facilitate and optimize the healthcare dollar and how it is spent with physicians. Further we are in negotiations with other technology companies that provide a plug-and-play type of opportunity for us to expand the opportunity and type of technology service we are able to bring to market.” CEOCFOinterviews: How is the business broken down percentage wise now and do you foresee that changing in the future? Mr. Guillama: “The Company has recently completed what we call the ‘reorganization’. We changed the company’s name, symbol, and reincorporated the company in Nevada. We have received shareholder approval to complete the acquisition of RHS and QMT. We expect in the coming 12 to 18 months, subject to financing, that the majority of the company’s revenue will be generated from managed care activities. A material amount, probably no more than 25%, will be generated by outside consulting and outsourcing services. We expect no more than 10% will be technology, IT and web-based interactive services. We will be driven for the foreseen future by consulting and managed care outsourcing services.” CEOCFOinterviews: With all of the competition, where do you get your customers? Mr. Guillama: “The overwhelming amount of competition in each of these areas is actually where the opportunity lies. The typical physician has to deal with dozens of different providers to offer the services we have described we are providing or intend to provide. For example, in the IT business, they may have one that builds a network in their facility, one consultant that builds a website, and another one that does the online transactions, which is their billing, collections services and electronic medical records. We intend in the future, to provide all of those services to the physician. Physicians today have business consultants, billing and collection consultants, coding consultants, managed care consultants, marketing consultants and financial consultants. It is overwhelming and highly inefficient. On the opposite side, you have an HMO that has to deal with tens of thousands of physicians in one state and then deal with the dozens of hospital services and other ancillary providers. We expect to concentrate products and services on a geographical basis. We have described our business model as a Florida only operation. Though that may sound like we are limiting the size and scope of our company future growth, you have to first realize that the total revenues of the healthcare industry in just the three counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach is almost a twenty billion dollar industry. We have expectation to be across this state in 4 years. That provides a great opportunity and we think our diversity will be our strength.” CEOCFOinterviews: Do the physicians and the HMOs know they need an intermediary, and how do you get them to realize that? Mr. Guillama: “The HMOs and physician community have been evolving with the idea that they need an intermediary. Part of the proof is that the company that I founded is today doing about $150 million in annual sales profitably, and about 90% of that is “intermediary” functions on behalf of HMOs. There are a numbers of other companies providing the same services, both in the State of Florida and other states. The HMOs still do 80% of their own work but they are starting to realize that it may be more efficient to outsource that work in part because a local company has a much better touch and feel with the local physician than a multi-state and/or out-of-state HMO. This shift in thinking provides a billion-dollar business opportunity for a developing market segment. The physicians are at a huge disadvantage, though they seek the guidance of their local, regional and national Medical Society Associations, in an effort to try to find the best model physicians realize that they generally do not have the time or ability to optimize their business process and they are at the mercy of well intentioned, but not always well qualified employees. Medical office managers as one example do not have the resources or the ability to find the resources to give them the best practice methods. They are too busy trying to stay ahead of economic and operational pressures. We have been very well received in our presentations to physicians. Physicians realize they need help. Physicians are getting a tremendous amount of pressure from the HMOs and government programs in the form of actual reductions in payments for healthcare services, while at the same time overall medical inflation as a whole is increasing 10% per year. . While at the same time and to make thing worse, you have ever increasing government regulations, such as HIPAA, that put a much higher burden on their operational experience. We are not even discussing annual increases in employee cost, benefits, medical malpractice premiums, rent and other G & A expenses. Sadly, physicians are getting it from both ends a real reduction in revenues and increasing costs.” CEOCFOinterviews: How do you convince the doctors to work with you and purchase your services? Mr. Guillama: “We go to physicians and offer them a basic service. For example, the HIPAA consulting which is necessary and can act as our introduction. We go into a medical practice and evaluate their processes and conduct a gap assessment study. Once the study is completed, we help them become compliant. After that we are able to provide them other services. While we are doing that process we have to look at managed care contracts and we may see that those managed care contracts need to be updated and revised due to current market conditions. This way we are able to bring them additional value. The same thing might happen with the relationship they may have with a billing company. We will be able to see what they are getting and how they are getting it. There is no initial charge for this review service to them.” CEOCFOinterviews: What is it that you know about operations that others do not know, and please tell us about the proprietary technology? Mr. Guillama: “Our primary objective is to bring the best practices to the physician, and the use of exiting and new technologies. The technology that we are developing is intended to track the flow of money and the effectiveness of the money that is spent to care for the patient as well as coordinating that care. A material amount of the healthcare dollar today, as much as 20% by some estimates, is spent on redundancy, duplication, fraud and unnecessary services and diagnostics. Once our technology is deployed we believe we will be able to reduce those numbers. Remember, we are dealing with an industry that is about one and a half trillion dollars, even on a regional basis a one or two percent reduction in healthcare cost would be a substantial number.” CEOCFOinterviews: How is this better for the patient? Mr. Guillama: “Our goal is to improve the quality of care. Many consumers are confused in thinking that expensive or unlimited care is better quality care. Most research facilities have found that not to be true. We, as a country, spend up to 50% more on a per capita basis than other developed countries that have by most standards, a better healthcare system, if you consider lifespan, infant mortality, over-all wellness and lifestyle as the qualifying factors. We spend the most money but we do not have the best system. We, in The Quantum Group, believe that being more proactive and connected, by connecting the managed care organization to the physician to the patient, that we will be able to provide better healthcare for our patients or the patients of our clients at a lower cost.” CEOCFOinterviews: Will you tell us a little about your finances and where dollars are being spent? Mr. Guillama: “Right now our dollars are going into developing our first Community Health System (CHS), and the ability to contract with the HMOs of which I mentioned. A smaller part is going into the research and development of creating these technologies in the patent pending process. The balance is in finding and attracting the best talent from the industry to help build this company. Currently management has been responsible for the funding of the Company’s operations; however, we are optimistic that in the near future we will be able to attract the $2.5 million we will need for the next 18 months to achieve our business plan as recently disclosed in our Annual Report to the SEC, which I refer you to.” CEOCFOinterviews: In closing, why should potential investors be interested, and what should they know about The Quantum Group that people may not realize when they look at the company? Mr. Guillama: “What people need to look at is our management team and the real world experience of that management team. They need to look at the largest industry in our country and the opportunities that provides for growth and return on investment capital. It is very rare that you have an industry where any credible economist can calculate that we will grow over ten percent per year compounded for the next 25 years. There is no industry that could be assured that will have that kind of growth over such an extended period. We are about to see 70 million “baby-boomers” enter retirement. Every day we see, read or hear announcements that we are spending more on healthcare. You have to look at management and industry and the ability to bring those two together in an efficient and profitable manner. I think we would pass the muster of any open-minded investor looking to capitalize in the 1.5 Billion healthcare industry, even in a highly speculative micro cap company. In the United States, we spend $5,500.00 per every person in healthcare services, prescriptions and products, yet most people spend more time choosing the car they want to buy than the physician and/or healthcare to provide their healthcare.” As our company’s motto proclaims, we intend to provide “healthcare solutions for a new generation (SM)” disclaimers |
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