Amil International - Texas

Amil International - Texas is headquartered in Austin. Amil started operations in Texas in May 1996. It currently has 36,000 members in PPO and HMO group plans.

The Amil Group

Amil International - Texas is a company of the Amil Group. The Amil Group is a privately held group of companies started in Brazil in 1970. The first company of the Amil Group was a small hospital in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Over its 31 years of existence the Amil Group has become a 22-company conglomerate operating in managed healthcare, other employee benefits, insurance, healthcare services, marketing and advertising, pharmaceuticals, healthcare supplies and other industries.

The Amil Group parent company is Amil Assistencia Medica Internacional, a managed health care company founded in Rio de Janeiro in November 14, 1978. Amil has today over 1.2 billion dollars in annual revenue and over 1.3 million members in their healthcare organizations.

Innovation

The reason behind our success is innovation focused on customer needs. The Amil Group and Amil were founded by medical doctors and are to this day mostly managed by doctors. The founding of Amil was due to our belief that, as doctors and providers, we could better understand and address the needs of our clients. The Amil vision is that, more than a financial business related to risk coverage, managed healthcare entails making available to our members tools for permanent improvement to their healthcare status and prompt access to quality services. We partner with our physicians and other healthcare providers to ensure that such tools and access are granted to our members.

Amil has changed the healthcare market in Brazil many times over. In 1970, the first hospital of the Group was situated on the top of a hill in Duque de Caxias, a 700,000 people dormitory city for blue collar workers. When about to give birth, our clients had to engage in a 10-minute uphill walk from the bus stop to get to the hospital. Going home with their babies could also prove to be a hurdle: their husbands would usually come to the hospital to bring them home on Saturdays so they would not miss a day at work, on top of paying for a cab, a major expense for their tight budgets. To address the problem we stationed a van with a driver at the bottom of the hill to bring our clients to the hospital. We also provided transportation home for mothers and babies. To attract clients to pre-natal care we offered sodas to the whole family when they came for their follow-up visits. And we organized monthly educational sessions for future mothers on pre-natal and baby care. In a year, those initiatives took that hospital from the initial 30 deliveries a month to 400. As the Amil Group acquired more hospitals, we confirmed, from our daily dealings with our clients, that there was a real demand for excellence in services and quality of care. In 1974 we opened an intensive care unit for adults that was such a success that, in 1976, after a nine-month development period, we opened the first pediatric intensive care unit of its kind in South America. This 50-bed pediatric intensive care unit, in a recently built 400-bed pediatric hospital, became a center of reference for the whole State of Rio de Janeiro, for its quality of care, research and training activities. In 1978, after founding Amil on the premise that we knew how to address the needs of our clients, we started changing the way managed care was delivered in Brazil. At the time, all managed care plans in Brazil limited their members to coverage for three office visits per year. Amil innovated by offering no limits to the number of office visits. Many Brazilians felt uneasy about managed care because of the way payments were controled: physician offices had a list where the patient would write their name, so that the plan would reimburse the doctor for the services. Members told us they felt it was demeaning to them to "pay" the doctor that way, and felt that the doctor had the whole power in the transaction. Amil innovated by issuing vouchers that the member would receive and carry, as a checkbook, to pay for office visits and for tests. When going for an office visit, the Amil member would fill out and sign one of those checks and thus pay the office. This way, in the member's perception, the power in the transaction was returned to the member. To facilitate our members' access to the Company, Amil innovated with walk-in Customer Service Agencies located in the communities where our members lived or worked. Realizing that, although many of our members wanted to have a face-to-face contact to conduct their transactions, others preferred to have their questions and requests answered by telephone, Amil started our 24 hours a day, seven days a week Telephone Customer Assistance. Over the years, many other innovations were introduced in the Brazilian managed care market by Amil, the most recent ones being:

• Amil Health Rescue, a land and air rescue operation owned and run by Amil and offered to members of Amil and other managed care plans, in a Country of continental dimensions where you either live away from an urban center (thus away from healthcare resources) or you live in a traffic jam. Rescue is performed by ambulances, helicopters and jets.
  

  
  

• Farmalife, the first prescription plan in South America. Amil Brazil clients have a 50% discount on medication acquired in Amil drugstores.
  

  
  

• Continents Plan, a managed healthcare plan that enables a Brazilian patient who elects to do so to travel abroad for elective healthcare services.
  

  
  

• Amil Franchise, the first managed care operation of its kind.

Most of all, we have always worked hard to ensure the highest level of quality of care and of excellence of services in everything we do. Our most important contribution and innovation focus is and has always been to raise the bar of customer service in the markets where we operate. This is why, although many of our competitors have tried to copy many our innovations, they do not often succeed.

Amil currently operates in Brazil, Argentina and the United States. Our provider network covers more than 200 countries.

Amil International - Texas

Our company in Texas has been built on the same principles that Dr. Edson Bueno, the Chairman of the Amil Group, has very successfully used to build an internationally recognized healthcare company in South America.

What makes us different? How do we think we can be successful when so many other well meaning companies have failed? Here is why we are different and what makes us your managed care option in Austin:

Local Health Plan - We are based in Austin and operated by Austinites. All of your concerns and questions will be addressed by a team that lives in your town and understands local concerns.

Physician Owned - Amil, the parent company of Amil International, is owned by Dr. Edson Bueno and is operated by physicians.

24-Hour Customer Service - You will have telephone assistance answering your questions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year. We will be here to talk with you when you need us. Member eligibility can be confirmed whenever the need arises instead of waiting for a traditional "working day." We can answer your benefit, eligibility or access questions when they arise. We also welcome your suggestions and comments.

User-Friendly Materials - We have designed our material to be easily readable and understandable. The simpler the plan is to administer, the more time you have to focus on your business.

Information Exchange - We will conduct informal sessions for you and your office staff to talk about your questions, suggestions, and ideas. We want you to help us create programs that will simplify healthcare for our members, your patients and you.

The difference behind all this is the people in our company. Amil believes that people are the heart and soul of our Company. Amil believes that the key to the permanent improvement of our processes and to market innovation resides in the continuous learning and personal growth of our people. We set out to hire the best people we can. This means finding people who share our focus on brilliant customer service, who are recognized in the community for their expertise and integrity and who are committed to continual learning and training. Here, as in Brazil, we focus on the training and education of our people because we believe this is how we will be able to serve our clients better.

We have attracted a team of people who have many years of industry experience in Texas, in the U.S. and in Brazil. The following team members are examples of the expertise and talent that share our goals and visions to make a difference in our dedicated fields: