[Sponsored] Corporate Profile: The InterMed Group

Sponsored by The InterMed Group

The InterMed Group began as an X-ray service company in Gainesville, Florida back in 1992, but it quickly expanded its service offerings throughout the nineties to encompass ultrasound, nuclear medicine and biomedical.

“Working closely with health care facilities, we were able to witness first-hand the struggles that many operations have with managing their investments – be it inventory, preventative maintenance schedules, device and equipment procurement, medical device cybersecurity and, of course, equipment repairs. This prompted us to expand our services offerings and reach, acquiring MIT, Horizon CSA and most recently, Sigma Imaging Technologies,” The InterMed Group CEO Rick Staab said.

“At InterMed, we aren’t out to win against our competitors, we’re out to win by making the business and health care industry better,” he added. “Our decades of industry experience and breadth of services enable us to create efficiencies that save our clients’ time and money, enhance their services, and position them for growth. We always look for innovative new ways to provide services that will make health care more accessible and financially attainable to customers so that, in return, their patients receive the best care. It is important that we learn from our competitors and constantly seek ways to raise the bar; we hope that other businesses like InterMed look laterally to each other for motivation to improve on what others are doing, ultimately making the health care industry better.”

Staab shared one way this type of work is possible.

“Take our JumpTeams™ for example; we observed a gap in the industry when it came to finding experienced service engineers that can take on responsibilities like special project; we kept hearing the same pain points repeatedly from customers – not enough time, the budget isn’t there, they lack the physical resources, and personnel to manage the process,” Staab explained. “This prompted us to develop the InterMed Group JumpTeams™ – we provide and deploy engineer and technician support solutions for health care systems and imaging centers across the country. Since introducing JumpTeams™ to the industry, we’ve seen a huge boom in similar offerings by other companies as well. I hope the bar continues to be raised.”

ICE recently interviewed Staab to find out more about The InterMed Group.

Q: What are some advantages that your company has over the competition?

Staab: Innovation. We want to break the mold and have bigger impact rather than just the standard, cookie-cutter approach. The team here at InterMed is made up of some seasoned industry powerhouse professionals that have been in the field for 10, 20, even 30-plus years. Our team has experienced the heath care industry’s evolution firsthand; we are constantly evaluating how to adapt and make healthcare technology management better. Our mission at InterMed is to always bring the best; we know that to bring the best to our customers, we have to be the best at what we do. Our drive is to be efficient and impact health care, to make it more accessible to everyone, and not just make profits. Our goal is to bring hope to health care.

Q: What are some challenges that your company faced last year?

Staab: I think our biggest challenge in 2020, like many, was to keep all our team safe and healthy. Healthy mentally as well as physically; I don’t think anyone could have predicted the mental toll that the COVID-19 pandemic would have on health care and frontline workers. Through all the unknowns and challenges that we faced we really found that a positive mindset is key to overcoming any obstacle. By banding together and working even closer, from a physical distance of course, with each other and our customers we were able to embrace the challenges we were faced with and turn them into opportunities to improve.

So much remains unknown about the future, but we are optimistic. The dedication to the safety and well-being of patients and peers that InterMed witnessed throughout 2020 continues to inspire us to bring the best every day in every way.

Q: Can you explain your company’s core competencies?

Staab: Healthcare technology management (HTM) is a broad summation of what we do here at the InterMed Group; to our team everything we do is a service, including selling equipment. We really look at our relationships with customers as partnerships in longevity – yes our solutions help immediate needs, but we feel that it’s equally as important to look ahead and start planning for their future needs. It is a strategic approach rather than a reactive response to immediate needs; we harness artifical intelligence (AI) to evaluate important data so that we can provide our customers with options and supporting evidence that allows them to make smart decisions for their current situation and for the future. We often like to attend board meetings or strategic planning meetings so that we can help play an active role in the development and success of our partners’ organizations.

What we do in philanthropy is another part of our core values here at InterMed that really makes us stand out. We have learned that in addition to the best products and service, customers also deserve to buy from a company that is dedicated to improving the health of our community. It’s part of what we do every single day. We have an official charity, Tyler’s Hope for a Dystonia Cure. Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder with over one-third of dystonia patients being children. InterMed and Tyler’s Hope are committed to finding a cure for dystonia and we won’t stop until a cure is found.

Q: What is on the horizon for your company?

Staab: Our goal is to become the number one independent service organization in the market and in the industry for healthcare technology management services. We already consider ourselves to be in the top one percent of true HTM providers in the country; we have all the services and technical skill sets to provide each element of service needed, from infusion pumps to MRI.

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that change is inevitable, and it can come on swift. Our team embraces change as an opportunity to push ourselves to be better and more efficient. We are a small yet nimble organization which has proven successful time and time again. Looking into the future of InterMed we hope to further expand our company nationally so that we can have a greater impact on health care; our JumpTeams™ have completed work in almost all 50 states already, but we hope to put down more roots in more states throughout the upcoming years. Over the past decade we have already grown so much, expanding from our headquarters in Florida, throughout the entirety of the East Coast and bordering states. Our plan now is to head west into the central and mid-western states while we continue to develop in some of the industry’s key markets for hospitals – Florida, Texas and California for example. We’re seeing a lot of doors opening to partner with larger health systems that will really catapult our reach and impact within the industry.

It is just as important to us that as we expand our partnerships, we continue to attract the best engineers and team members to InterMed – our internal philosophy of constant and never-ending improvement is really highlighted by our investment in training and educating all our employees to be the best at what they do. We want all our teammates to be confident in the work they produce and proud of the work they are doing here at the InterMed Group.

Q: Please share some company success stories with our readers – one time that you “saved the day” for a customer.

Staab: Our standard of service is what defines us. It’s our purpose and our passion. We seize every opportunity to serve our clients and exceed expectations at every turn. With our clients, downtime is critical to the success of their operation – especially in the current environment – so when they need parts or a new device installed, we understand that time is of the essence.

Early on during the pandemic, our team converted our warehouse depot to a repair space for urgent repairs to devices needed desperately by hospitals across the state. We took in over 500 ventilators to repair and prep for distribution to hospitals. It’s not the first time we’ve uprooted our facilities to meet the needs of hospitals and it certainly won’t be the last; our clients are out there saving lives on the frontline and it’s our duty to make sure the equipment and technology they need to do their jobs are working properly.

Q: Can you describe the company’s facility for our readers?.

Staab: Our corporate campus is based in Alachua, Florida – just outside of Gainesville, right in the heart of north-central Florida. Our corporate campus is 50,000 square feet on 40 acres of land; our building houses administrative offices and a warehouse for repairs, reconditioning, storage and training. As of February 2020, we have a second location in Westampton, New Jersey; with over 38,000 square feet of warehouse and office space, it’s exciting to have resources close by as we continue our expansion into the Northeast market.

InterMed continuously works to ensure we foster safe and inclusive working environments for our employees; everyone adapted quite well to the adjustments made over the past year due to COVID. Our focus has been on keeping workspaces clean, sanitized regularly, providing proper PPE and creating socially distanced spaces.

Q: Can you share recent changes to your company, inventory, services, etc.?

Staab: In February of 2020, the InterMed Group acquired the New Jersey-based Sigma Imaging Technologies. Sigma’s longstanding specialization in big iron medical equipment further enhances our abilities in MR, CT and PET CT. Acquiring Sigma has significantly expanded our reach in parts, service and equipment sales offerings to current and prospective customers.

There has been a massive increase in cyber and digital data storage and processing in health care over the past year, a trend that we do not see slowing down anytime soon. The health care industry is the most targeted industry when it comes to cybercrime and cybersecurity crime. The InterMed Group is an industry leader for cybersecurity profiling; we assess medical devices, cloud systems, equipment – really any place within a health care system that stores data digitally. Recognizing the need for better cybersecurity management for many of our current clients, we are excited to expand our current cybersecurity profiling services to encompass remediation following our diagnosis, which is very exciting for us.

We have also been focusing a lot of our resources in harnessing the analytics and AI we have developed to increase our forecasting abilities for our clients. We are able to analyze the information we gather from our clients to personalize their immediate and anticipatory needs which increases efficiencies and mitigates any potential for downtime.

Q: What can you tell us about InterMed employees?

Staab: We attract people that want to be the best at what they do, but that are also seeking a purpose or a cause to get behind. We employ incredibly well rounded, good people that are constantly going above and beyond. In business you often observe a disregard for morals, but not here at The InterMed Group; morals come first for us and for the people that make up our team. Everyone has a critical role in supporting our clients and their patients. It was never more evident that we have a great team of dedicated professionals here at InterMed than when the going got tough in 2020.

It is an honor for me to be able to be a part of this team.

Q: What is most important to you about the way you do business?

Staab: Our mission at The InterMed Group is to always bring the best as the exclusive, trusted provider of scalable healthcare technology management services, powered by innovation and guided by experience. We seek out opportunities for our clients to grow, provide a level of services that exceed that of our competition and the expectations of our clients. We believe we must earn our clients’ business every day, in every way. We communicate with the staff and patients in a courteous, friendly and professional manner always.

We value integrity and keeping agreements, which is why all our employees operate under The Sundown Rule – Simply put, we address every challenge or customer concern by sundown each day so that our clients know our response and when to expect a resolution. This establishes a level of trust that is very hard to duplicate and supports our focus on long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. The Sundown Rule is in the core of our company values.

Q: Is there anything else you want readers to know about your company?

Staab: At InterMed we understand that our solutions not only change our clients’ business, but they also impact lives – and that is not something we take lightly. It’s what drives our commitment to excellence, our thirst for learning and our dedication to innovation. Seeing our role in the big picture inspires us to bring our best every day so that our clients’ can be their best.

Throughout our history, our commitment to quality and our craft in the industry is evident by our involvement in organizations that support the future of the health care industry. A testimony to InterMed’s pursuit to bring the best is our Quality Management System was first certified ISO 9001:2015 for adhering to a quality standard globally recognized as superior; most recently we received ISO 13485 certification for Medical Device and Quality Management Systems. This means that our quality management system meets the most current standards for the service and sale of medical devices as set forth by the International Organization for Standardization.

We are an active member in the Alliance for Medical Equipment Services, comprised of six leading independent medical device service organizations throughout the United States, serving as an independent voice and advocate for health care providers. I am also a voting member of the Medical Device Servicing Steering Committee that reports to the FDA.

Here at The InterMed Group our company and team members go beyond turning wrenches because we all know the industry will never stop evolving, so we will never stop pushing to create solutions for tomorrow’s challenges.