Wizzard Software Completes Acquisition Of Interim Health Care Of Wyoming
Pittsburgh - Wizzard Software announced today that it has closed its acquisition of Interim Health Care of Wyoming, a home health care agency. Interim Health Care will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wizzard and will retain its current management team.
Based in Casper, Wyoming, Interim Health Care of Wyoming has been serving their community for thirteen years, and is part of the fast growing home health segment of the healthcare industry, providing a wide range of visiting nurse services to the elderly, wounded and sick. It is one of the 300 home health agencies that comprise Interim Health Care. For the last 3 years, Interim's unaudited revenues have increased steadily, reaching almost $2,000,000 in 2003 and $2,227,311 in 2004.
"We are very excited to be joining such an exciting company in Wizzard and feel their speech technology and expertise will have a huge impact on our efficiency and patient care," said Brenda Mosher, President of Interim of Wyoming. "We believe the future of our industry is driven by the personalized care our nurses provide and we want to be sure they have the best tools available so that each patient feels safe, comfortable and healthy in their own home."
Wizzard has taken notice that the healthcare industry has proven to be a significant adopter of speech technologies and over the next 18 months, plans to acquire several more home health agencies (HHA's) to complement their speech and talking pill bottle products. Wizzard plans to remain focused on its core speech technology business while at the same time continuing on its plan to benefit from increased profits in products/industries where speech can have the most profound impact. Presently, there are over 7,000 HHA's in the U.S. Many HHA's are very profitable and produce attractive cash flow.
"We are very excited to have Interim Health Care of Wyoming join the Wizzard family and we believe it will be a big part of Wizzard's future as we aggressively enter the home healthcare market with our speech technology products," says Chris Spencer, CEO of Wizzard Software. "It is a great industry to be in right now and Interim has top notch management and staff. We look forward to demonstrating what can happen when two great teams get together and integrate speech technology in an efficient and convenient fashion."
Home health care is a rapidly growing segment of the current U.S. health care system, and is forecasted to grow by over 42% in the next five years. According to the National Association for Home Care, approximately 7.6 million people in the US require some form of home health care.
Wizzard anticipates this transaction and futures acquisitions of multiple HHA's to be accretive to earnings for its shareholders. Wizzard plans to ensure this by: encouraging economies of scale; increasing productivity by adding speech technology to forms and other processes; increasing revenues by offering off-the-shelf speech based products such as talking blood pressure monitors, talking medication reminders, talking insulin reminders, etc.; aggressively adopting "talking" telehealth as a means for nurses to increase patient visits without increasing staff; and using these acquisitions as a platform for building customized home health care speech technology systems which can then be sold to the other 7,000 HHA's in the U.S.
Home health care and telemedicine needs are anticipated to grow in the future with industry analysts predicting internal growth for the industry to reach $69.0 billion by 2012. A report released by Frost and Sullivan in April of this year contributed the growth of telemedicine systems in the United States to the aging population, complemented by the shortage of physicians and nurses to attend the patients. According to the U.S. Administration on Aging, by 2030, there will be about 71.5 million older persons, more than twice their number in 2000.
SOURCE: Wizzard Software