1StopMD Forms Strategic Advisory Board; Physicians and Procurement Experts Support New Company.

Business Editors/Health and Medical Writers

ARCADIA, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--April 19, 2000

1StopMD(TM) (www.1stopmd.com), a health-care electronic business, Wednesday announced formation of a Strategic Advisory Board composed of three prominent physicians who represent multiple specialties in various geographic parts of the country.

Also joining the board are a procurement executive, a banking professional and a physician management consultant.

Venkat Yepuri, co-founder and chief executive officer of the company, said that the Strategic Advisory Board helps guide 1StopMD in establishing an online purchasing environment for out-of-hospital physician practices. 1StopMD provides busy physician practices with the convenience of online buying and purchasing power comparable to that of large purchasing organizations.

S. Dandamudi, M.D., is a practicing internist in the Los Angeles area and a physician-advisor to the Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center, an institution he has served for more than 12 years in various board and committee capacities, including chief of staff. He has been practicing medicine for 19 years and is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine.

R. Kilaru, M.D., is a radiologist who was part of the active medical staff of two hospitals in Abilene, Texas. He has been practicing medicine for more than 20 years. Dr. Kilaru served on the boards of several medical associations and actively participates in the American College of Radiology, as well as many professional groups.

R. Nemani, M.D., is attending physician at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. Dr. Nemani, who has been practicing medicine for more than 22 years, regularly uses information technologies, including the Internet, to improve his practice's overall efficiency, reduce overhead and improve patient care.

S. Kumar is a respected bank executive with a distinguished career in executive management for several prominent financial institutions, including his last assignment as CEO of Brentwood Bank of California. He is currently a senior partner of The Navigators USA, a Los Angeles-based management and financial consulting firm.

D. Cardinal is a principal in the Atlanta office of William M. Mercer Inc., a global consulting firm. He provides physician productivity and compensation program development consulting services to the firm's healthcare clients. He has more than 15 years of executive-level experience in the healthcare field as an acute care hospital administrator, chief operations officer and physician programs executive.

C. Noland is a strategic sourcing expert with more than 24 years of experience. For the past four years he has been a leader in implementing the strategic sourcing initiative at Kaiser, which has yielded more than $200 million in cost savings. In addition to his Kaiser experience, he has held senior level procurement positions with the University of California Berkeley, Apple Computer and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is also an adjunct professor at California State University at Hayward.

In its pilot phase, the company signed up several physician groups in multiple specialties at 47 locations across the United States. Working relationships are also in place with major distributors of both medical and office supplies. According to Yepuri, physicians and their staffs want to devote more time to patient care and less to administrative functions. Consequently, they do not have time to deal with multiple suppliers and handle multiple invoices. He added that quite often physicians end up paying significantly more than what hospitals pay for supplies.

Privately held 1StopMD Inc. is the largest, solely Internet-based aggregator of medical office and pharmaceutical products and services for the out-of-hospital physician practice. The company maximizes physician purchasing power by streamlining the flow of goods between manufacturers, distributors and out-of-hospital physician practices. Founded in 1999, the company is staffed and supported by a management team and advisory board with more than 100 years of medical practice and business experience. The company is located at 55 E. Huntington Dr., Suite 100, Arcadia, Calif. 91016. Telephone: [phone] or via e-mail at [e-mail].

1StopMD and Maximizing Physician Purchasing Power are trademarks of 1StopMD Inc.