Friday, February 19, 2010

Creg Parks Talks about His Startup

Creg Parks Talks about His Startup

Where are you from originally?

Dallas, Texas


What university did you go to?

UT-Arlington


What brought you to Austin?

Business, the culture, and geography


What is the idea behind your startup?

AMH was created in June 2008 and is a healthcare management and consulting company that specializes in the planning, development, implementation, and operations of various healthcare delivery systems, managed care networks and our new Healthcare Information Solutions. Our company goal is to improve the healthcare delivery system.


What need does it fulfill?

Over the past two decades we have developed and negotiated provider fee schedules for payers and providers. This process is very time consuming and it is difficult to conduct this analysis. Our market research indicates that 9 out of 10 healthcare providers do not perform any type of predictive modeling or fee schedule analysis because they do not have the time, expertise, or tools to do so. Furthermore, 95% of these target customers have indicated they are interested once we introduce the process and the PMT solution to them. The PMT process takes a few seconds compared to the manual process, which can be about 2-20 hours. One of many success stories from our current PMT customers provided the information for the client that the new rates proposed by a Payer would have decreased their annual revenues by $250,000 annually, therefore the customer did not agree to the proposed terms. Without the PMT analysis, the client would not have known this financial impact to their business.


What exactly does your product do?

We offer a new financial analysis software and service called the Predictive Modeling Tool or “PMT”. PMT analyzes historical medical claims data based on current or past payment rates providing our clients the total projected financial impact of the new rates. Our target customers are healthcare providers, payers, health systems, self-insured employers, and governmental entities. The PMT solutions change the current complex healthcare payment system and fee schedule analysis process into an affordable, easy to use solution.

Who is it for?

Our target market: healthcare providers, payers, employers, governmental entities, and future products for the healthcare patient community.


What was the most challenging aspect of starting up a business?

Market penetration, company and product branding and positioning.


What is the next step for you and your startup?

Go to market, secure funding, product development of additional modules.


What advice do you have for entrepreneurs?

Prepare, be persistent, never give up, network, secure appropriate funding, create a smart advisory board and experience strategic alliances.


What Austin-based resource have you found to be the most helpful and why?

Austin Entrepreneur Network-great capital resources, networking and business education. Also the Small Business Development Center is a good resource of information