[February 3, 2005]

Beryl to Answer FCG�s Health Care Calls

By David Sims
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

Long Beach, Calif.-based First Consulting Group, Inc. has announced that it will stop providing telephone-based marketing and information services – such as a nurse help line and triage or physician referrals – a service line it had acquired along with Coactive Systems Corporation in May 2003.

The discontinuation of this service line does not impact FCG's IT help desk services, which are still available to full and discrete outsourcing clients. FCG will also retain its call center services software product, Full Contact.

As of today FCG has completed the sale of its contracts relating to this service line to privately-held MPB Group LLC, which does business as The Beryl Companies, based in Bedford, Texas. Beryl, a well-known provider of health care call center services, will serve FCG’s existing client relationships.

FCG will continue to provide post-acquisition services to The Beryl Companies under a subcontract during an expected 60-day client transition period.

FCG expects to record a charge in the fourth quarter of 2004 of approximately $1.6 million, relating to the discontinuance of this service line. This loss on disposition of discontinued operations primarily consists of the writeoff of goodwill.

The discontinuation of these services is expected to result in improved pretax income from continuing operations of approximately $300,000 per quarter, or $1.2 million, in 2005. Additionally, the company expects to report a loss from discontinued operations in the first quarter of 2005 of $500,000 net of tax, or 2 cents per share, due to wind-down costs.

The Beryl Companies are familiar faces, having provided outsourced customer service solutions exclusively to the health care industry since 1985. More than 500 hospitals, hospital systems and other healthcare organizations have used Beryl's call center services. Beryl's call advisors have provided physician/service referrals, health information, telephone nurse triage and class/seminar registration to more than 15 million callers.

FCG acquired Coactive for the princely sum of approximately $638,000. Based in Nashville, Coactive provided inbound and outbound call center services such as product marketing calls, physician referral and class registration, nurse advice, disease management, clinical trial screening, patient and physician satisfaction, patient eligibility, and general information calls through its proprietary software applications to the hospital and payer markets on an outsourced or ASP model basis.

Luther Nussbaum, Chairman and CEO of First Consulting Group, said at the time that acquiring Coactive's established call center offerings and operating platform was done to beef up FCG’s business process outsourcing initiatives.

David Sims is contributing editor and CRM Alert columnist for TMCnet.