PLANTATION, Fla., Oct. 6, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- MEDirect Latino Inc. (Pink Sheets:MLTO) (www.medirectlatino.org), the first national provider of direct-to-consumer Medicare reimbursed medical products focused exclusively on chronic diseases afflicting the Hispanic community, today announced that it had filled a key management position at the company through the hiring of Ms. Tammy Perez as Supervisor of Customer Care and Medicare Billing.
The company has recently added 22 customer care, medical billing and shipping personnel and expects to hire at a substantially stronger pace through the end of the year than had been previously projected, due to the increased customer response rate resulting from the national advertising campaign. The company will host a job fair October 28, 2005, to recruit 40 employees for positions in sales, customer care, billing, shipping and advertising. MEDirect Latino's sales and warehouse facility is 6,000 square feet located in Plantation, Florida, and current infrastructure is expected to accommodate the projected employee growth. The company facility is currently operating on a single shift in all departments and plans to add additional shifts are underway.
Supervising the implementation of the company's proprietary selling methodology is Ms. Tammy Perez. Ms. Perez joins MEDirect Latino as Supervisor of Customer Care and Medicare Billing, overseeing sales, customer service and Medicare billing. Additionally, her responsibilities will include developing standard operating procedures for the on-going introduction of new products and services to the company's growing database of customers. Training for customer care representatives integrates five selling methodologies, which are culturally specific and demographically driven. Ms. Perez will continue to refine the company's sales program to include the integration of new products lines to existing customers on the Medicare reimbursement cycle, and increase the efficiency of all customer care specialists as they attain maximum average order per client, and the lowest possible customer acquisition cost. MEDirect Latino is the first company to develop a culturally specific, Hispanic, direct-to-consumer, Medicare-eligible sales program in the United States, and continues to evolve its customer care and billing systems to better serve its target market.
Stated Ms. Tammy Perez, Supervisor of Customer Care and Medicare Billing, "Our call volume has more than tripled since our national campaign kicked off on September 20th, and this has created an abundance of new jobs and challenges to our infrastructure. Our response and closing rates prove we are providing much needed critical services to the Hispanic community, and we will continue to add the staff necessary to provide the best possible service to our customers." Added, Ms. Perez, "As we continue to grow, it is very important that our representatives are trained to understand the Latin culture and the methodologies the company has established for communicating with our customer on a personal level. Many of the traditional marketing and service techniques used in the Anglo market are not applicable to our target market, and therefore we are extremely proud of our staff as they continue to achieve sales and service goals that exceed our expectations, while designing a new playbook for direct to consumer marketing."
Ms. Perez brings 12 years of industry experience, joining the MEDirect Latino executive team, whose combined 150 years of business development experience includes corporations such as NBC-TV, South Pacific Holdings, Mercy Hospital Group, Logan Pharmaceuticals and AmeriSource. MEDirect's President, Debra Towsley, and COO, Charles Hansen, have over 60 years of combined marketing experience, as former Director of Strategic Alliance Marketing for Universal Studios and Vice-President and General Manager of Pax TV. MEDirect's General Operations Manager, Mr. William Van Aalten, a pioneer in the direct-to-home diabetes care market, brings over 40 years of experience in pharmaceutical sales at both the wholesale and retail levels. MEDirect's Co-Chairman, Dr. Julio C. Pita Jr., former Head of Endocrinology at Mercy Hospital, is one of the leading specialists of diabetes care in the Hispanic community.
Ms. Debra Towsley, President of MEDirect Latino, in discussing the staff additions stated, "The company is extremely proud of the progress that we have made in recent months as we have successfully met the challenge of simultaneously increasing sales, product offerings and shipments of our products, while increasing, training and integrating our new staff additions. The company owes a great deal to Ms. Perez, who has met and exceeded our goals of the integrations of staff and systems while achieving records results. We believe that the results of Ms. Perez and our staff will be evident when we announce our September operating results on Monday, October 10th at 4:05 p.m."
Analytical Reports
Additional company information may be obtained by reviewing a detailed research report published by noted micro-cap analyst, Mr. William Ritger, President of The Research Works, Inc. covering MEDirect Latino. The report is now available for review at: http://www.stocksontheweb.com/mlto.pdf.
Additional company information may be obtained by reviewing a comprehensive analytical profile generated by small-cap analyst, Mr. Gerald Kieft, President of Wall Street Resources, Inc. The 27-page report includes detailed information on the company's business model, products, industry, valuation, management, and risks. The free report is available at: http://www.wallstreetresources.net/pdf/fc/MLTO2.pdf.
About MEDirect Latino:
MEDirect Latino (Pink Sheets:MLTO) (www.medirectlatino.org) is a rapidly growing, uniquely positioned provider of direct-to-consumer Medicare reimbursed medical products focused exclusively on chronic diseases afflicting the Hispanic community in the United States and Puerto Rico. MEDirect is the only company positioned to serve the U.S. Hispanic health care market as a direct-to-consumer Medicare provider on an authentically national level. The company's current focus is the distribution of products for the treatment of Type II diabetes, specifically because of its disproportionate impact and increasing diagnosis rate within the U.S. Hispanic population, noting an incidence of 120 percent higher than among non-Hispanic whites. Type II diabetes was also targeted because of its unique status within the Medicare reimbursement regime and because of its high degree of correlation to other chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease. These other conditions represent considerable future market potential that will allow MEDirect to efficiently scale its model by leveraging its existing client base and infrastructure.
The current Hispanic market for MEDirect's products is conservatively estimated at approximately $748 million in the continental United States. The size of the opportunity is understated by such figures as an estimated 1.2 million of the over 4.1 million Hispanics in the United States over 65 eligible to receive Medicare benefits are currently collecting these benefits with an estimate that over 1.4 million of those Medicare-eligible Hispanics have diabetes (implying a potential continental U.S. market for MEDirect products of approximately $1 billion).
Safe Harbor Disclosure:
This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws, commonly identified by such terms as "believes," "looking ahead," "anticipates," "estimates" and other terms with similar meaning. Although the company believes that the assumptions upon which its forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, it can give no assurance that these assumptions will prove to be correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company's projections and expectations are disclosed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements in this press release are expressly qualified by such cautionary statements and by reference to the underlying assumptions.
The MEDirect Latino Inc. logo is available at: http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=1873.