Audio for this transcript available
Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And now it's time for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, brought to you by Aflac. Ask about it at work. And for this morning's flashback, we're going to roll back to earlier this week where I sat down and visited with Jack Smyth, President and CEO of Spring Medical Systems, and this was a cool discussion because Jack's company is digitizing medical records. Digitizing medical records has made it on the list of approved stimulus applications. So check this out.
Jack: We're a company that's been around since 2001 is when we incorporated, but our product, an electronic health records product that helps doctors to move all their medical records from paper to electronic, has been around since 1996.
Russ: Well I gotta tell you, I've had since 1996 quite a bit of medical experience, both myself and family members. And I gotta tell you, Jack, it seems like that part of commerce has been behind the rest of the world. Is that my imagination?
Jack: It's not your imagination. It's a very sad statistic that only 4 percent of doctors in the United States are using electronic records. The rest are using paper and pen. Many doctors don't even have email addresses today.
Russ: I come from a technology background, and so I consistently see all the opportunity there. But as I understand it, too, you and your company are preparing because it looks like things are going to change now. There's going to be a stimulus involved.
Jack: That's accurate and it's unbelievable. Mr. Obama has decided that electronic health records is very, very important for everybody in the United States, and he's actually carrying on a goal that President Bush put in place a couple of years ago that every American have electronic health records by 2014.
Russ: Wow. So it might be close to prime time in your business, right.
Jack: I think we're in the right place at the right time. And I told a couple of my people the other day that make sure their seat belts are in good shape because it's going to be a wild ride for the next couple of years.
Russ: Cool. Well tell us a little bit about the government stimulus plan and how it's going to affect physicians.
Jack: So it's part of the ARRA, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that President Obama has signed and congress passed, and it identifies 17.2 billion dollars to reimburse doctors for using electronic health records.
Russ: So they don't have the cost excuse anymore doesn't sound like. Man!
Jack: They have completely removed that cost excuse.
Russ: So the government is giving taxpayers' money to doctors to buy your type of product, right?
Jack: They are. But the ultimate goal is to save billions of dollars in our healthcare costs in the United States by moving doctors to electronic records which are going to be much more efficient and easier to use.
Russ: Okay. This is bound to get rid of the resistance to change.
Jack: It's going to get rid of a lot of the resistance to change. As we spoke earlier, the doctors are very resistant to moving into electronic records, but this should encourage maybe half of the doctors out there, at a minimum, to move to electronic health records, and that's going to be a huge movement from 4 percent to 50 percent.
Russ: It just passed last month. Have you gotten any feedback yet from doctors? Have you noticed that they have noticed?
Jack: We actually are experiencing record sales, and we think that part of it is because the doctors have been thinking about electronic records for a long time, didn't know when to move; but now with the stimulus package identifying some reimbursement, maybe it's time for them to move.
Russ: Okay. So even though we're in sort of a down economy for most of us, it's like your business is going to be expecting record success over the next few years.
Jack: We expect to more than double our business every year for the next 5 years.
Russ: And that wraps up the radio broadcast portion of this discussion with Jack Smyth, President and CEO of Spring Medical Systems. But there's more to this discussion for sure. So go to thebusinessmakers.com and check out the Jack Smyth WebXtra. And that wraps up the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, brought to you by Aflac. Ask about it at work. And you're listening to the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.