In an earnings call following the filing, Division President, Maureen Huber, said language interpretation demand was up 30% in 2020. She added that this momentum has continued into 2021 with interpretation volumes expected to rise by at least 35% in the first quarter. Servicing this demand, Huber said, are the company’s 3,300 medical interpreters who cover 208 languages.
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During the same call, AMN Healthcare CEO, Susan Salka, referred to the Stratus Video deal (Pro) as “a fantastic example” of an acquisition that adds value and said such a company would top the list of potential M&A targets moving forward.
Salka further pointed out how “the language interpretation industry is pretty fragmented,” and there still exist “opportunities to do other tuck-in acquisitions.”
Asked to elaborate on Stratus Video’s strong performance, Huber and Salka, mentioned five growth drivers, summarized as follows:
- The market is huge – Huber said US medical interpreting is a USD 1.6bn industry, which includes onsite, phone (OPI), and video interpretation.
- The market is underserved – Only half of US hospitals have deployed video interpretation. According to Huber, most hospitals still “rely heavily on their staff interpreters” or OPI and yet “93% of communication is nonverbal.” She added that video interpretation is preferred for reasons related to “patient safety and improved.”
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- In-person interpreting declined due to Covid – This opened up the opportunity for video interpreting and, Huber said, the company was able to step in with tech-enabled services: “We actually doubled the number of call centers, where we could enable the hospital system’s own staff to provide services.”
- The US LEP population continues to grow – Huber described it as “pretty significant,” saying that part of this growth will come from hospitals converting from purely OPI to video interpreting or from in-person to remote because of patient safety during the pandemic.
- They have barely scratched the surface for integration – According to AMN CEO Salka, the company has been integrating Stratus into other telehealth platforms for acute-care facilities as well as those that belong to other telehealth providers. “I think we’ve got 25 to 30 platforms that we’ve integrated into, and so there’s a lot of opportunity as telehealth in general grows.”
Salka further noted, “Most telehealth companies or technology providers aren’t going to provide that network of 3,000-plus language interpreters — and so we are a wonderful plug-in to services that are already or going to be launched.”
