John Bardis' goal in the health care business is to pin his competitors' ears back — just as it was when he spent much of his time struggling on mats with burly wrestlers.

And while he's running Alpharetta-based MedAssets — one of many metro area companies in the business of health — he's also preparing to head to Beijing in July as team director of the U.S. Olympic wrestling squad.

Bob Andres/AJC (ENLARGE)

'We try to have contracts for every product and service a hospital has to employ,' said MedAssets Chief Executive Officer John Bardis. He also owns the Alpharetta Family Skate Center, known as The Cooler.

HOW THIS BUSINESS WORKS 1. MedAssets helps hospitals figure out how much they should pay for necessities like gauze and syringes, and also big-ticket items like replacement knees and hips. 2. The company negotiates prices with vendors and publishes them in a sort of high-tech catalog. 3. Hospitals and other customers can use the catalog to shop for the best prices. MedAssets does not actually buy items, but negotiates prices. It also sells software that helps hospitals track payments for supplies and services. BUSINESS Latest Headlines: AirTran to fly twice daily from ATL to Columbus, Ohio  With no reviews, Delta merger 'on track'  Home Depot earnings fall 25 percent  CNN, Weather Channel win on the Web  Dollar making comeback in Europe  • More Business News • Business Photo Galleries

There, the 51-year-old Bardis, a guy who eschews neckties for silky open-collar shirts, will be in charge of logistics. He will make sure the Greco-Roman wrestlers on the Olympic team get where they're supposed to go and get what they need for the least possible cost.

Which is pretty much what his company does for its customers — it handles the logistics necessary to save them money.

In China, he'll have 17 wrestlers in his charge, a tiny number compared to the company's 1,200 employees, who spend their days tussling with health care vendors and searching databases to find the lowest prices for the goods and services needed by MedAssets' 2,500 hospital customers.

Bardis took MedAssets public on Dec. 13, selling 15.3 million shares for $245 million. The company issued financial results last week for the first time since going public, reporting a loss in the fourth quarter of $126,000 after adjusting for expenses, compared with a loss of $1.6 million a year earlier.

The company said net revenue increased to $188.5 million last year from $146.2 million in fiscal 2006. It predicted revenue in the range of $230 million to $236 million this year.

MedAssets helps hospitals figure out just how much they should pay for thousands of necessities such as gauze and syringes, but also big-ticket items such as replacement knees and hips.

The company negotiates prices with vendors and publishes them in a sort of high-tech catalog that hospitals and other customers can use to shop for the best prices.

"We are aggregating the buying power of all our customers," said Gary Johnson, a MedAssets senior vice president. "Twenty or 25 percent of hospitals' expense is supplies. That's why we have to find lower prices from a thousand-plus vendors."

MedAssets also helps more than 125 health systems and 30,000-odd nonacute care providers such as surgery centers and nursing homes decide what's fair to pay and charge, and how to get what they need quickly.

It's a logistics job, just like Bardis' role as team leader of the Olympic wrestlers.

MedAssets' stock, sold on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker MDAS, began trading on Dec. 13 at $19.75. It closed last week at $15.80.

A report by William Blair & Co., an equity research firm in Chicago, said MedAssets offers "more than 20 revenue-improvement and spend-management technology services and consulting products, all of which are focused on driving recurring financial benefits to hospitals."

Many of those "stand out in the marketplace" and should deliver earnings growth long term of up to 20 percent, the report said.

The report said MedAssets has built "impressive" technologies that will help hospitals alleviate "negative operating margins" that plague 25 percent of such medical institutions.

Bardis said his company helps hospitals — many accustomed to operating in the red — turn a profit. MedAssets also sells software tools that help hospitals with insurance reimbursements, including from Medicare and Medicaid.

"We have contracts with companies that do employee screening, contracts with companies that do roof repair and air conditioning and waste disposal," Bardis said. "We try to have contracts for every product and service a hospital has to employ. Our software helps with purchase orders and hospital audits to make sure they're charged what they ordered."

Just recently, MedAssets signed a contract with Grady Memorial Hospital to help it manage and control expenses.

So far, the company's efforts have paid off, Bardis said.

"Hospitals are primarily in the business of taking care of patients," he said. "They are not primarily in the business of health care finances, procurement of product or in the business of insurance. But because of the way they are structured, they have to deal with very complex and sometimes very powerful organizations — managed care, for example. That's why they are constantly in this struggle. The managed care companies host far more data information and are much more powerful in negotiations than the hospitals. "

Wrestler since childhood

Hospitals aren't allowed by federal law to share key data, Bardis said, so MedAssets steps in "to make the playing surface more even. What I learned as a wrestler in terms of strategy and reacting helps run this business."

He began wrestling at age 10, then spent time on the mats in high school and at the universities of Wisconsin and Arizona, from which he earned a degree in business. Last year, he was leader of a U.S. team that, for the first time, won the FILA World Wrestling Championship in Baku, Azerbaijan.

He also owns the Alpharetta Family Skate Center, known as The Cooler, a sports complex where his three children — two boys and a girl — have spent a lot of time, along with their dad and mom, Judy.

"One of our main competitors is Novation, out of Dallas, and Premier, in San Diego, which are old, established businesses that have been dominant in the group purchasing business," Bardis said. "We have taken over $10 billion in market share in the past six years."

Chuck Mauro, director of materials management for the University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill, contends one reason for MedAssets' success is Bardis' tenacity.

"He's brought fresh and energetic ideas to an area of health care that has been sorely neglected," Mauro said. "We get a custom catalog of our products, and we're able to go into a safe portal and get anything you can imagine a hospital purchases."

Bardis, who has more than 20 years of experience in the health business, has taken two other companies public — San Antonio-based Kinetic Concepts, which designs and sells therapeutic products, and TheraTx, a respiratory therapy firm that also was based in Alpharetta. It was acquired in 1997 by Louisville, Ky.-based Vencor.

Larry Marsh of Lehman Brothers said MedAssets helps "hospitals get smarter. They give hospitals a chance to fight back, and it should be good for consumers because they make hospital costs come down."

Added Corey Tobin of William Blair: "Their competitors have 20 to 25 percent of the market, with MedAssets in the low teens, but we believe they are going to grow at a higher rate."

Steve Fraser, America's 1984 Olympic champion wrestler who has been head coach of U.S. wrestling teams for 17 years, said Bardis' success in business is hardly a surprise to him.

"He's been a very important cog in our quest for Olympic medals," Fraser said. "He's the type of guy who'll do anything for the team, and the wrestlers know it. He's a very nice guy, but he knows when you step out there on the mat, it's time to be tough. That's his attitude in business — strategy, power, endurance, determination. It's made him a winner."

ABOUT THE COMPANY

• Name: MedAssets

• Founded: In Atlanta in 1999

• Nasdaq symbol: MDAS

• Global customers: More than 2,500 acute care hospitals and about 30,000 nonacute care medical providers

• Research: About $7.5 million in product research and development annually

• Headquarters: Alpharetta

• Employees: More than 1,200

CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

• John Bardis

• Age: 51

• Education: Bachelor's in business from the University of Arizona

• Family: Wife Judy and three children.

• Lives in: Alpharetta

SHOPPING LIST

Some of the thousands of things that MedAssets helps its customers get the cheapest prices on:

• Syringes

• Rubber gloves

• Replacement hips

• Replacement knees

• Hospital gurneys

• Hospital beds

• Software

• Computers

• Any kind of food, dairy, whatever hospital needs to feed patients

• X-ray film

• Petrie dishes

• Face masks

• CT and MRI scanners

• Operating room lights

• Test tubes

• Surgical instruments like scalpels

• Stethoscopes

• Computer hardware and software

• Oxygen tanks

• Phone service

• Housekeeping supplies and service

• Security equipment (cameras, monitors)

• Patient monitors in patient rooms

• IV poles