News

Release No. 0505-99
May 2, 2005

BALLAST POINT VENTURE PARTNERS
ANNOUNCES INVESTMENT
IN GHN-ONLINE, INC.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Ballast Point Ventures L.P. (“BPV”), a venture capital firm affiliated with Raymond James Financial, Inc., today announced it has closed an equity investment in GHN-Online, Inc. (“GHN”) of Dallas, Texas. BPV was the only investor in the $2 million financing, which will be used to fund expansion of the business.

GHN is a provider of revenue cycle management (RCM) for the healthcare industry. GHN’s network architecture makes the company one of the first 360-degree medical claims and revenue cycle management systems designed for “real time” use via the Internet, allowing customers to know the status of all claims in the system. GHN’s customers benefit from end-to-end, direct to payer processing of medical claims from billing and explanation of benefits through EFT. The company targets a variety of healthcare stakeholders for use of its products, including ambulatory surgery centers, clinical labs, hospitals, physician practices, large employers, payers and financial institutions.

GHN-Online is led by Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer Azadeh Farahmand. A 24-year veteran of the healthcare IT industry, Farahmand has been the principal business architect for GHN’s products and services since the company’s founding.

“We are pleased to welcome Ballast Point Ventures to the GHN team and to have Dick Brandewie join our board,” said Farahmand. “The partners at BPV have an impressive, long-term record of investing in high-quality growth companies. With this round of funding we have additional resources to enhance our offering and increase our sales and marketing efforts to further expand the business beyond our current 1,200 satisfied customers.”

“We are pleased to have the opportunity to invest in GHN-Online,” remarked Dick Brandewie, managing partner of Ballast Point Ventures. “Rapidly changing requirements and increased complexity in the Healthcare IT space create a significant opportunity for newer companies such as GHN that offer innovative, technology-based solutions to providers who want to streamline their collections process. To date, management has done an outstanding job building the company without outside capital. This infusion of capital will allow the GHN team to accelerate its growth and aggressively pursue additional opportunities.”

The investment in GHN reflects the Ballast Point strategy of providing expansion capital to rapidly growing, well-managed companies in the Southeast and Texas.

About GHN-Online, Inc.

GHN is an enterprise class revenue cycle management company providing complete and accurate electronic claims transaction solutions to healthcare payers and providers in real-time via the Internet (ghnonline.com). GHN’s solution ensures the timely reimbursement of healthcare claims by providing an intuitive transaction management environment, which includes comprehensive data scrubbing, editing, status tracking and reporting features exclusive to the Company that assist the client in completing the continuum of healthcare claims transactions from insurance eligibility and claims submission to remittance and payment. GHN’s suite of services is provided via the Internet and can be integrated with any information system transmitting data in virtually any format.

About Ballast Point Ventures, L.P.

Ballast Point Ventures, L.P. is a venture capital fund established to provide expansion capital for rapidly growing, privately owned companies in diverse industries, with a particular emphasis on companies located in Florida, the Southeast and Texas. The BPV partners have more than 60 years of combined experience investing in and building high-growth companies in a number of industries, including healthcare, business services, communications, technology, consumer products and specialty retail. The Fund seeks to make equity investments ranging in size from $2 million to $5 million. For more information, visit ballastpointventures.com.

For additional information visit www.ballastpointventures.com
or contact Richard J. Brandewie, Drew A. Graham
or Paul C. Johan at 727-567-1500.