1. HealthMark Partners. Healthmark is a great company. It is led by the humble but smart and disciplined and terrific Bill Southwick. Its chief of business development is Kenny Spitler. It has a mix of physician/hospital joint-venture ASCs, de novo projects and turnarounds. It combined last year with Alliance Surgical Partners. This has really helped them strengthen their platform and management team.
2. Blue Chip Surgical Center Partners. Blue Chip is led by Jay Rom and Jeff Leland. In a few short years they have built an outstanding company that has centers focused on ENT and spine as well as several other areas. They also have physician/hospital joint ventures, examine physician-owned hospitals and have done a great job with hands on management of ASCs.
3. Symbion. Symbion has one of the most stable and veteran teams in the ASC business. While they principally own and operate ASC joint ventures, they also have many physician/hospital joint ventures and have a done a great job in entering the physician-owned hospital market. We have several clients that have partnered with Symbion over the past few years and we’ve heard praise post deal from every one of them. They have a great team at multiple levels.
4. Practice Partners in HealthCare. Founded by Larry Taylor, a true professional, Practice Partners has enjoyed steady growth and keeps adding centers and great people to their management team. We understand they recently added Marc Goff, an outstanding professional and former colleague of Larry’s to their team. Larry and Marc and Mike Rickman are great professionals.
5. NovaMed. Led by a great team that includes Tom Hall, Bill Kennedy, Tom Chirillo, John Lawrence and others, NovaMed is a true success story for 2008. It has shown great strategic drive and focus in moving itself to the next level. It now has 35 ASCs in 18 different states. A great piece was recently run on NovaMed on SmallCapInvestor.com.
6. Orion Medical Services. This company led by Jim Cobb has established itself as a growth company that is well past the point of having a great platform and into the timeline of accelerating their growth. To get a better sense of the outstanding testimonials regarding Orion and their dedicated team, see their Web site. There are truly outstanding testimonials from clients.
7. Pinnacle III. It would be hard to find better and more hands-on leadership than what Rob Carrera and Rick DeHart and their team bring to ASCs and practices and physician/hospital joint ventures. Aside from management and development, they also have an outstanding focus in central business office functions. They are truly outstanding people and we have seen them in specific action moving challenging projects to closure and helping make them successful thereafter.
8. Meridian Surgical Partners. Led by Buddy Bacon and Kenny Hancock, this is about as good of a buyer and consolidator of centers as there is. They have, over the years, acquired majority interest in centers from clients and, in each case, delivered on adding value after the transaction.
9. National Surgical Care. Led by Sami Abbasi, Rick Pence and Greg Cunniff, this is another company with stable and disciplined management. NSC has done a great job since Sami took leadership, making this a blockbuster growth story. They are smart as can be and get transactions done and bring serious discipline and value post-deal.
10. The C/N Group. Led by the Chopra family, this company has interests in ASCs, imaging, MOB developing and many other areas. They have done an incredible job of building a team and growing a thriving company.
11. Medical Facilities Corp. There is no one smarter and no one like Dr. Larry Teuber, MFC’s president. Larry handled two presentations at our fall ASC conference. He is a master at taking an idea, and honing and maximizing its potential. He gets better speaking reviews than almost anyone and has the rare knowledge to be both an unbelievable speaker and insightfully smarter executor of ideas. He is truly masterful and interesting person.
12. Facility Development & Management. This is a true east-coast driven growth and success story. This is a company that is on the right track and growing at an exponential pace. To learn more about FDM, speak with Ed Hetrick, FDM’s president. He is a really good person and straightforward leader.
13. Foundation Surgery Affiliates. Tom Michaud continues to lead Foundation Surgery. He is an amazing long-term leader in the ASC business who, aside from ASCs, now spends a great deal of time in the hospital arena. Tom is an unusually nice person who has really grown as a leader and professional over the years.
