Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) June 8, 2018
June
07--Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group is part of a $2.2 billion deal to
acquire a controlling interest in a physician-staffing company based in
Washington state, according to a rating agency's report issued Wednesday.
The deal was first
announced in April, when the German dialysis company Fresenius Medical Care
said it would sell to an investment consortium its holdings in Sound Inpatient
Physician Holdings LLC.
On Wednesday,
Moody's Investors Service issued a report assigning a rating on debt related to
the deal and identified the acquiring firms as Summit Partners and OptumHealth,
the UnitedHealth Group division that is rapidly expanding its patient-care business.
The
physician-staffing company is "primarily focused on providing hospital
medicine," Moody's said in its report. "It also provides services
across the acute episode of care including that for emergency rooms and
critical care units. As of 2017, the company had 3,500 employees and roughly
$1.3 billion in pro forma revenues."
UnitedHealth Group
did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In its report,
Moody's said it based its rating in part on OptumHealth's ownership stake. The
agency also noted that "one of Sound's customers owns a small take in the
company, which Moody's believes mitigates the risk of contract loss."
During an investors
conference last month, UnitedHealth Group CEO David Wichmann did not mention
the physician-staffing company, but talked about growth prospects for patient
care services.
About 32,000
employed or aligned physicians care for 15 million patients annually at
OptumHealth, Wichmann said. Care-delivery services account for about two-thirds
of OptumHealth's projected revenue this year of about $24 billion.
"We expect
OptumCare will be many multiples of its current size at full maturity,"
Wichmann said, according to a transcript provided by the company.
In April, Fresenius
said the deal is subject to regulatory approvals and anticipated to close in
late 2018. Late last year, UnitedHealth announced a $4.9 billion deal to buy
medical clinics run by Denver-based DaVita Inc., which is another large
dialysis provider.
DaVita Medical
Group served about 1.7 million patients per year at the time in nearly 300
clinics with primary and specialty care. It also operated 35 urgent-care
centers and six outpatient surgery centers.
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