PLANTATION, Fla., Dec. 7, 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 record results for November, 2005 in gross billings, new patient shipments and call volume. MEDirect Latino reports gross billings of $540,114 during the month, a 29% increase over October billings of $418,406. The Company maintained gross product profit margins of 77% during the period. Total new patient shipments for November numbered 2,030, an increase of 30% over October new shipments of 1561, and ended the month with an additional 1,908 patients approved and pending shipment for regulatory processing. MEDirect Latino expects to monetize its approved and pending patient orders in December, which is typical to the industry model. The Company's closing ratio during November remained unchanged at 82% of the total qualified response rate from its national and regional media campaigns.
Mr. Raymond Talarico, Co-Chairman and CEO, stated, "The Company continues to meet or exceed our projections each month as we focus on providing critical services to the underserved Hispanic Medicare eligible diabetic customer. Management designed each department's infrastructure; customer care, sales, billing, processing and fulfillment, to be scalable and responsive to our customer acquisition objectives which provides management great flexibility in the placement of advertising, both nationally and regionally. The Company increased its sales and processing and fulfillment staffing to 39 employees by the end of November from 24 in October, with the additional employees hired to meet increased demand. We have been able to integrate these new staff members seamlessly, without a drop in our efficiency as indicated by maintaining our closing ratio during the month. As a first mover to market, MEDirect utilizes this scalability to provide both high quality health care products to our customers, and at the same time, set industry standards for the quality of care for our elderly Hispanic community. This is a responsibility the Company does not take lightly, and has proven to be important as new customers migrate from traditional Anglo providers to MEDirect, because we understand our customers needs and are sensitive to the cultural considerations."
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 healthcare 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 US Hispanic population, noting an incidence of 120% 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 $748MM 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).
The MEDirect Latino Inc. logo is available at: http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=1873
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.