Alere Medical Inc. Enters into a Long-Term Disease Management Contract with PacifiCare, Expands Services

RENO, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 21, 2005--

Company expands to offer an administratively streamlined best-of-breed solution focused on high-prevalence, high-cost disease states that realize material, quantifiable savings and improved clinical outcomes

Alere Medical Inc. (Alere) today announced that it entered into a long-term disease management contract with PacifiCare Health Systems Inc., resulting in a significant expansion of its existing size and service offerings. The transaction will expand Alere's integrated, condition-specific disease management services to include additional disease categories, which combine objective and subjective data to support physicians' practices, improve patient adherence and compliance with their treatment plans, and deliver significant savings. Additionally, Alere will provide services to more Medicare lives through its health plan clients (about 800,000 lives) and will participate in more Medicare demonstration projects (three projects including HeartPartners) than any other DM company.

The transaction includes:

-- The transfer of PacifiCare's disease management staff to Alere including Gordon Norman, M.D. (EVP, Business Development) and Kathy Cartelli (Vice President, Operations)

-- A long-term disease management contract with PacifiCare in which Alere will directly service or administratively oversee a comprehensive disease management program

-- Administrative responsibility for the HeartPartners Medicare Demonstration project authorized by BIPA under the Medicare Modernization Act

-- Expanding DM offerings beyond cardiovascular diseases and diabetes to include respiratory diseases (COPD and asthma) and kidney diseases (ESRD and CKD)

-- The opening of new offices in Orange County, Calif.

Alere, as a result of the transaction, is now able to provide a more effective alternative to the generic "one-stop shop" disease management vendors. Leveraging its own medical informatics department, PacifiCare has previously demonstrated significant savings and clinical outcomes utilizing the best-of-breed approach which Alere intends to continue. With its expanded service offering and enhanced medical informatics department, Alere will be able to better serve its customers.

Ronald Geraty, M.D., CEO of Alere, said, "We've been very interested in moving beyond our proven approach for heart failure to providing disease management for all high-prevalence and high-cost diseases. We are committed to offering a true alternative in the industry to those companies who attempt to cover a high number of disease categories, yet fail to save their customers real money. We're also very excited to move our excellent current relationship with PacifiCare into a long-term arrangement."

Sam Ho, M.D., chief medical officer of PacifiCare, said, "The new long-term arrangement with Alere allows us to focus on what we do best for our members and at the same time work with a trusted partner to assist us in improving the clinical outcomes of our members and saving unnecessary medical and hospital costs. We remain committed to improving the quality of health care to our members with chronic diseases by utilizing proven best-of-breed programs, which will now be administered by Alere."

Tim Moore, M.D., chief medical officer for Alere Medical, said, "Since I've joined Alere, we've been expanding our efforts beyond heart failure disease management and cardiovascular diseases and soon will be offering a diabetes program. This transaction allows us to accelerate our efforts to offer programs in diseases in which we can truly have an impact. Our interventions are targeted to the specifics of an individual disease state and move away from the industry norm of 'one size fits all.' Consequently, we can give providers actionable 'just in time' clinical information that is focused on compliance and adherence to treatment. Our ability to frequently and consistently collect objective and subjective information from several data sources, including from our high-risk patients, gives us the ability to intervene quickly based on sound, validated data. We're not interested in being a 'me-too one-stop shop.' We're committed to offering disease management services where we can have a demonstrated impact and deliver value to our clients."

About Alere Medical Inc.

Alere Medical Inc. is a leader in services that integrate objective and subjective data to produce actionable information that supports physicians' practices and improve adherence and compliance with their treatment plans. Alere Medical's unique combination of at-home monitoring, pharmacy benefit monitoring, patient stratification technology, empowering education, and daily review by caring clinical professionals provides the physician with patient-specific provider alerts that are actionable, timely, and validated. This results in positive clinical outcomes, greatly reduced hospitalizations, substantial cost savings, and high levels of client and patient satisfaction.

Alere Medical has received NCQA Patient Oriented Full Accreditation for its Heart Failure Disease Management Program (2004-2007), and is also ranked #64 on the Inc. 500 list of America's fastest-growing private companies (2004). For more information, visit www.alere.com or call 775-829-8885.