Dear United Family,
This week we are back to work and ready to greet a new year. It’s no doubt that 2020 was hugely challenging for people and companies all over the world. It also started out to be hugely challenging for us at United Family. However dealing effectively with challenges is in our DNA - we have been doing it since the first day we were told that foreign invested private healthcare could never be a successful in China. We take challenges seriously. Face them head on – and never give up.
The 2020 challenge was many-fold. First it was the direct challenge presented by the COVID outbreak. Thanks to a speedy action by our Supply Chain team, we were quickly prepared with PPE, not only for ourselves, but also for donations to those most in need. We also worked closely together with our New Frontier shareholders whose collaboration meant our contributions were meaningful not only in intention but also in scale and impact.
The challenges of dealing with COVID did not stop with having sufficient PPE. Our doctors, nurses and ancillary staff worked fearlessly and heroically on the front line for our patients and also as public health volunteers.
Some of our facilities were shut down for a time, and/or had enforced closures of certain high risk departments, and were faced with patients concerns about coming to healthcare facilities. This obviously directly impacted revenue. In addition, all facilities had to respond to the continu- ally adjusting requirements of epidemic infection control, making adjustments to building space, buying new equipment, and creating fever clinics, which caused further pressure on our cash flow and bottom line. Thanks to the efforts of our finance team we were able to meet these needs in a timely way.
We are grateful for the quick action by the administration of all of our facilities, as well as the support from BD, SCMC, and HR, as well as the guidance of our board. Our amazing IT depart- ment also responded quickly and creatively helping us to move services on line at a pace which surprised and pleased us all.
People in every department made sacrifices. Early in the year we had to say farewell to some of our long term colleagues. Leadership in headquarters agreed to reduce or forego their remuner- ation so that those at the front line could carry on as usual.
Despite these hardships 2020 was a year of building foundations for the future. We were fortu- nate to have the collaboration of our new colleagues from New Frontier. Carl Wu and David Zeng joined me to make up our new executive team. They, along with several other new col- leagues have brought new ideas, new approaches and fresh ways of looking at our company along with their passion for healthcare business and the future of United Family.
January 2021
Through the efforts of this group and with the support of our new Board of Directors, our legal, finance, HR and internal audit teams we completed a full year in full compliance as a newly pub- lic company on the NY Stock Exchange.
With the support of our medical affairs and nursing teams we developed our clinical networks and enhanced our internal training programs while keeping our staff and patients safe.
Our marketing and sales teams created initiatives both on line and off which fueled sales vol- umes to a whole new level.
Our IT team not only continually helped to give us a safe and increasingly efficient online work- ing environment, but also helped get us closer to our patients through our upgraded patient por- tal, online consultations and soon-to-be internet hospital.
Each of our facilities had numerous achievements which deserve celebration.
BJU, BJC and the Rehab hospital joined together to function as an integrated market, achieving synergies and efficiencies. Soon they will welcome the new Datun Jingbei Women’s and Chil- dren’s Hospital to the comprehensive Beijing offering. BJC extended their outreach services be- yond the school community with clinics within the AIIB and Universal Studios Park. BJH also concluded its 500th robotic surgery which was an impressive milestone.
In 2020, Hainan Bo’ao United Family Medical Center served almost 20,000 clients. In addition to its now nationally famous HPV vaccination service, the center has added Family Medicine and Pediatric vaccination services. Taking full advantage of the preferential policies the special medical zone, our Bo’ao Center achieved a breakthrough in utilizing specially approved interna- tional cancer drugs, not yet available in the rest of China, for patients from our New Hope Can- cer Center.
Shanghai facilities also joined together as an integrated market in the second half of the year. PDU was able to achieve strong revenue ramp-up even through the COVID-19 period. OB reve- nue achieved 50% growth despite the overall declining birth rate. Meanwhile PXU has been building its capabilities on many specialties to provide comprehensive services to patients. PXU completed several complex surgical operations in 2020, which has milestone significance in our history.
In 2020, TJU launched the Loyal Patient Family program to explore a new family doctor service model. The ensuing in-patient revenue growth demonstrated the value of providing more com- prehensive primary care to targeted patient families, creating a more loyal long term customer base.
GZU celebrated the birth of its 500th baby and 8 months of EBIDTA positive results in its sec- ond full year of operations and continued to broaden its scope of service. Their efforts in devel- oping dynamic patient wechat groups brought us closer to our patients and resulted in record breaking successful e-commerce campaigns.
QDU finished the build-out of its new Cancer Treatment Center and also concluded an agree- ment for a close collaboration with Shandong University Qilu Hospital.
Last year the foundation coordinated the care of 600 orphans and needy patients through our 1% program, coordinated our COVID related donations and also, together with the medical af- fairs office and our volunteer doctors and nurses arranged our participation in the Han Hong Charity trip to Yunnan, where we were able to extend United Family style caring to many pa- tients and also screened 1,500 women for cervical cancer.
We are looking forward to the opening of our newest hospitals in Beijing in the first half of 2021 and in Shenzhen in the second half. We are also excited about the new horizons we will dis- cover with our official online hospital license which will be coming soon.
So in 2020 we not only survived- we thrived! A great platform to build on for the future. I can only imagine how we will all prosper together, and build new models of care for China in a post COVID world.
Carl and David join me in wishing all of you, our United Family, good health, happiness and to- gether scaling new heights in 2021.
Warmest regards,
Roberta Lipson
