Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Extends Relationship With The Beryl Companies Through 2005.

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

LOS ANGELES--(BW HealthWire)--June 24, 2002

New Three-Year Agreement Seen as Testament to "Professional Service,

Quantifiable Results and Substantial Return on Investment"

Seen by Medical Center Over Past Two Years

Fueled by the impressive performance results recognized during the past two years, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has extended its agreement with The Beryl Companies through 2005. The new three-year agreement means that Beryl will continue to manage the Customer Interaction Center on behalf of one of the county's best-known and most widely respected healthcare institutions.

Over the past two years, Beryl has designed for Cedars-Sinai a unique combination of call center and Internet support services that make health information, physician referral and information on specific Cedars-Sinai specialty centers available to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most importantly, consumers are able to access this information and communicate through whatever medium they feel most comfortable -- telephone or Internet -- and still receive the same responsiveness and high level of customer service.

"We have been incredibly pleased with the professional and personalized service Beryl has provided to our community," said Grace Cheng, vice president of marketing and public relations for Cedars-Sinai. "When you combine that with the quantifiable results and substantial return on investment we've seen, we believe that in Beryl we have found the perfect partner."

Since outsourcing their call center services to Beryl in 2000, Cedars-Sinai and their callers have realized many benefits in both efficiency and service including:

-- Total call volume has increased 38 percent thanks to effectively integrating
the call center with the hospital's branding/advertising campaigns.

-- Wait times for callers has been reduced to an average of 30 seconds with
abandonment rates of less than 5 percent.

-- Physician and specific specialty center referrals have increased by 91
percent.

-- A first-tier ROI methodology has been developed, largely using referral
service/call center data. The hospital has witnessed an increase in revenue
reconciled by 47 percent -- newer data suggests that the increase may be as
large as 70 percent.

-- Transfers from the call center to specialty centers have increased by 31
percent.

-- Online physician referral capabilities have been added and soon so will
online chat. This has resulted in an additional 3,000 user sessions per month
and 800 new physician referrals monthly.

"Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is truly one of America's great hospitals and is respected throughout the world for its medical excellence and state-of-the-art services," said Paul Spiegelman, chief executive officer of the Beryl Companies. "Over the past two years we have had the opportunity to employ some of the industry's most sophisticated consumer-focused technologies on their behalf. We look forward to a great continuation of this partnership."

On behalf of Cedars-Sinai, specially trained Beryl telephone call advisors provide a full array of services including physician referral, community education program information and referrals to various Cedars-Sinai specialty centers. Consumers preferring to visit www.cedars-sinai.edu to obtain a physician referral may do so as well. Soon, Web-site visitors will be able to engage in a real-time chat with a Beryl call advisor who will also be equipped with the capability to "push" Web content directly to the consumer's desktop.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is one of the largest non-profit academic medical centers in the Western United States. For the fifth consecutive, two-year period, Cedars-Sinai has been named Southern California's "gold standard" in healthcare in an independent survey conducted by the National Research Corporation. Named one of the 100 "Most Wired" hospitals in healthcare in 2001, the medical center ranks among the top ten non-university hospitals in the nation for its research activities.

Cedars-Sinai is also a member of VHA, Inc., a nationwide network of 2,200 leading community-owned healthcare organizations and their affiliated physicians. Last year Beryl was selected by VHA to be its preferred vendor in the area of outsourced call center services.

The Beryl Companies is the nation's premier healthcare-exclusive Customer Interaction Center having answered more than 10 million calls on behalf of over 500 clients since its founding in 1985. Today, Beryl is home to the industry's most sophisticated array of consumer-focused, multi-channel communication vehicles including live agents, e-mail support, live chat and IVR, including Advanced Speech Recognition. Providers, payers, the pharmaceutical industry and numerous other healthcare organizations across the country are benefiting daily from Beryl's expanding portfolio of clinical and non-clinical services including call center outsourcing, Internet customer support and technology solutions. The company also has a consulting division, which assists healthcare organizations in improving their in-house capabilities and develops programs that enhance their customer relationship management initiatives.

Information on The Beryl Companies is available at www.beryl.net.