The Valdosta Daily Times

http://www.valdostadailytimes.com/business/local_story_160010930.html

An Innovative Idea

BY BILLY BRUCE
Sun, Jun 8 2008

— VALDOSTA — Physicians are trained to heal, not manage offices or personnel, grapple with insurance companies for timely reimbursement, or make sure their office computer networks are functioning properly.
Three Valdosta State University graduates are vying to come to local doctors’ rescue so the physicians will have more time to tend to patients by spending less time managing administrative headaches they were never trained to handle.
So good was the business plan drawn up by Baha Zeidan, Dan Henry and Doug Swords to create their comprehensive medical support business that they won the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Plan competition.
Their new business, Azalea Health Innovations Inc. (AHI), celebrated that victory Friday and cut the ribbon on their downtown headquarters on the first floor of the Wisenbaker Building at 100 N. Patterson St. across the street from City Market.
AHI has been doing business in the Wisenbaker offices since April 7, but the co-founders have worked on a part-time basis to assist local clients under the AHI name since 2007.
“The company targets small to medium-sized physician offices because that’s where they believe the demand currently is in Valdosta’s growing medical community that has ‘become a player’ in the region that includes Orlando, Jacksonville and Atlanta,” Henry said.
His partners concurred with that notion as well as the Chamber’s recognition that AHI is a perfect example of how young, high skilled VSU grads can be retained locally to provide much needed services here without having to find recruitment in larger cities for better pay.
“We’ve all been living here for quite awhile,” Swords said. “We’re not just swooping down from Atlanta, where we’d just be a small fish in a big pond. We feel like Valdosta is the perfect place for a business like ours to start.”
Other local businesses provide some of the products and services included in AHI’s menu, but none provide it all under one roof (see www.azaleahealth.com), the founders said.
The company can be contracted by physicians to help them meet a federal mandate to migrate all paper medical records and charts to digital files that can be accessed on an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) nationwide network by 2014.
The paperless network will cut out hundreds of hours of medical staff time by providing immediate access via computer to a patient’s medical records no matter where they’ve been treated, whether out of town or out of state.
That’ll save doctors thousands of dollars and hours they can turn back around and dedicate to their patients, the founders said.
AHI is licensed to sell and provide tech support for Praxis EMR software, which was ranked number one for functionality, ease of use and flexibility, service and support, and return on investment by the American Academy of Family Physicians and Family Practice Management.
The software services end of AHI is led by Zeidan and Henry.
Zeidan, AHI’s chief executive officer, graduated VSU with a Computer Science degree. During his senior year at VSU, Zeidan started working for Doctors Laboratory as an intern. Upon graduation Zeidan was promoted to network administrator, and now has extensive experience in network administration, servers management, interfacing healthcare systems, corporate firewall security, and more.
Zeidan is pursuing his master’s degree in Information Technology Management with a focus on Healthcare Information Technology Management.
Henry, AHI’s chief informational officer, graduated VSU with a Computer Science degree. While still in school, Henry started working for Doctors Laboratory as an intern. Upon graduation he was promoted to software applications developer. In late 2003 Henry designed, coded, tested, and implemented an online laboratory reporting Web site for his former employer. The Web site delivers approximately 15,000 reports per week with over 1,000 unique log-ins daily.
AHI also is certified by the National Electronic Billers Alliance to provide contracted billing services to physicians offices, which includes direct negotiations to insurance companies to garner timely, maximum reimbursement for doctors and tracking co-payment accounts of their patients.
That comes under Swords’ mantra. Swords is the firm’s certified healthcare reimbursement specialist and graduated VSU with a degree in Finance.
Swords is AHI’s chief financial officer and graduated VSU Cum Laude. He began his career as a finance department intern at Doctors Laboratory during his senior year at VSU.
Within his first six months of employment, Swords was promoted to accounts receivable supervisor. In 2004, he was given the additional title of revenue analyst. As a supervisor, Swords gained extensive experience managing and training medical billing and accounts receivable employees who process payments, denials, and more for the 4,000 plus claims billed daily from Doctors Laboratory’s Valdosta headquarters for its clients in Florida, Alabama and Georgia.
The founders began dreaming up the new business when they worked together at Doctors Laboratory.
They entered their business plan in the Chamber competition. Win or lose, they intended to implement the plan and form AHI regardless, Zeidan said.
Now the company has its sights set on the future. They’re planning to add transcription services to their menu and also are developing original software products to benefit the medical community and are also building strategic partnerships with local and national companies to add more products and services to help physicians with day-to-day operations.
Even if an office doesn’t want to contract with AHI for accounts receivable or other billing services, the office can obtain Praxis software from AHI and get the training to run it too, Zeidan noted.
The company also offers custom Web development applications geared to medical healthcare providers, performs business continuity planning, custom programming and much more.
“The medical community’s infrastructure continues to grow in Valdosta, which has become a regional center for healthcare to thousands of South Georgians,” Zeidan said. “We believe the timing for our new company couldn’t have been better. And we’re very proud to be located in downtown Valdosta, the heart of the city which is now bustling with new business and activity.”
The founders also say they’re proud members of the Chamber’s MetroOne organization, which is geared to help young professionals who choose local careers to network and grow to help the Chamber meet its goal to help the city retain such high skilled employees and thus provide a boost to the local economy.
The founders are joined at AHI by Mark Poole, senior support manager, and Adam Foley, human resources manager.
Poole is a senior at Georgia Southern University majoring in Information Technology and has several years of experience in various aspects of Information Technology.
Foley graduated VSU with a degree in Management. He began his career as regional account manager for a local farm when he established the first community supported agriculture “producer to consumer” program in South Georgia.
As a regional account manager Foley’s duties included sales, accounts receivable, customer relations, writing contracts and conflict resolution. Foley has extensive knowledge of both labor relations and human resource management including employment laws and organizational analysis.
AHI can be reached by calling 229-269-4620.

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