Digital Med

Resource Providers Inc. helps doctors and other professionals record their notes and keep them organized electronically to eliminate paper and retrieve them faster.

Tampa-based Florida Resource Providers Inc. helps legal, medical and other businesses go paperless by getting them to speak their notes into handheld recording devices, or into their phone, and keeps the records organized electronically for them.

It seems like a great concept for many professions, but about 98% of the business is medical - doctors looking for ways to save time and trim costs. RPI, located near St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, has more than 900 clients.

But entrepreneur and Chief Executive Officer W. Allen Clifford, 58, an Augusta, Ga. native, doesn't mind. Revenue at his seven-year-old, 17-person, privately held company was flat in 2008, is up 15 to 20% this year and commitments indicate they will double in 2010. The company provides transcript and records management.

“Mostly we've just been sticking to the company's knitting, responding to market,” Clifford says. “Really, it's a business focused on the customer service end of the medical services end. If a call comes in, I'll take it.”

Clients take dictation three ways. About half use 50 digital recorders. Some take them over the telephone. Others have in-house voice-gathering systems. The clients send Resource Providers their voice files, or the company picks them up.

Resource Providers compiles their records, gets them on Microsoft Word and provides to their clients the next day online or via print, fax or email. They are organized by physician's name and in chronological order and can be further customized for clients.

Clifford believes customer service is slipping in his industry and others. That's why a live person answers the telephone when a customer calls Resource Providers. Because of the demand, there are a number of competitors.

“Some companies are much bigger than we are, but no one more capable,” Clifford says. “We've spent a lot of money on technology.”

So, for example, Resource Provider records can provide prescription capability and track lab reports.

The two key issues in the business are customer service and technology. To most customers, that means digital recorders. But some doctors haven't invested in the technology yet. One 60-physician practice in Tampa uses cassette tape recorders to save their case notes.

Clifford believes there is a great opportunity to do business for law firms, which only make up 2% of their business. “I think they haven't had the same financial pressures that the medical business has had,” he says. “They are charging their clients for transcriptions being typed up. But they are starting to feel the transaction costs too.”

Although this is a business that needs to invest in recording technology, Clifford tells his employees to never ever forget to provide great customer service.

Consolidation should be coming in the future, he says.

“There are a huge number of competitors and a lot of companies are going to get bought,” he says. “We'll start to buy up $1 million to $3 million companies. They are getting up in age. We see the acquisition side as an opportunity, part of the consolidation in the industry.

It is a Web-based business, so Resource Providers has customers all over the country, including Seattle and El Paso, Texas. Off-site servers protect customer information in case of bad weather or disasters.