Being part of health care industry can be a plus

When credit is tight, it can help when you’re connected to the expanding health care industry.

“We’ve been lucky so far,” said Tim Kelly, marketing vice president of Dialog Medical of Duluth, which develops software and databases used by hospitals and clinics. “Thank goodness we’re in health care. Thank goodness we’re growing and no one has been canceling contracts. We’re cautiously optimistic.”

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Tim Kelly, marketing vice president of Dialog Medical of Duluth.

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Kelly thinks he’s seen some ripples from the national financial storm, but not in dollars-and-cents terms.

About two months ago, Dialog Medical, which has 33 employees, moved its banking business to Atlanta-based Georgian Bank from a “large multistate bank,” he said. The bank, which he declined to identify, has been reporting heavy losses and cutting jobs as the mortgage meltdown morphed into bigger problems on Wall Street.

Employee turnover at the bank may have contributed to “some lapses in customer service,” Kelly said, in how it verified large transactions and wire-transfer payments from Dialog Medical’s customers. Those wire transfers must “occur perfectly,” Kelly said, because the small firm’s revenues tend to arrive in big lumps, with little cash rolling in at other times.

Other small businesses have reported similar reasons for recently leaving big banks, said Brian Fisher, senior vice president of commercial banking at Georgian Bank. He said the bank has recently recruited several small businesses and similar customers who were upset about eroding service or the banks’ “not being willing to help them grow.”

Getting additional financing wasn’t one of the reasons why Dialog Medical bolted, Kelly said. The company has adequate financing from another lender, he said, and is in a good position to handle an economic downturn because it has “zero long-term debt” and has been “growing quite nicely.”

Still, one worry lingers as the credit crunch continues to dominate headlines, he said. Dialog Medical’s credit line, which it relies on to cover daily expenses in between big payments from its customers, expires in a little over a year.

By then, “our hope is that this whole crisis will be over,” he said.