Parachute Health has announced it has secured $9.5 million in new funding.

The funding round was led by Harley Miller and Dan Ahrens of Insight Venture Partners and includes investments from GNYHA Ventures, the business arm of the Greater New York Hospital Association, and Anthony Welters, formerly of UnitedHealth Group.

Parachute Health, based in New York, is a healthcare technology platform designed to assist with the ordering of medical equipment and services for patients following discharge from a hospital.

The company indicated that the money from the funding round will be used to expand its ePrescribing platform into key U.S. markets.

Parachute previously announced in March that it had raised $5.5 million from investors including Loeb Holding Corp.

McGuireWoods has long been an avid supporter of the advancement of professional women. As part of our initiative seeking to expand the leadership of women in private equity, we are profiling women leaders in private equity throughout 2018. We are hopeful that this series will serve to inspire other women to pursue their careers in private equity in a way that best challenges and motivates them, which these impressive women have all done. This month, we are pleased to feature Maureen Spivack of New State Capital Partners. Access her profile by clicking here.

To recommend a woman for a future interview, email Amber Walsh at awalsh@mcguirewoods.com

Linden Capital Partners has announced the closing of its fourth private equity fund with $1.5 billion.

Linden Capital Partners IV was oversubscribed, exceeding a $1.25 billion target. The fund will target middle-market healthcare companies in sectors including services, medical products, specialty distribution and pharmaceuticals.

Linden Capital, based in Chicago, is a PE firm focused exclusively on leveraged buyouts in the healthcare and life sciences industries.

The next in our series of posts sharing key takeaways from panels at the Healthcare & Life Sciences Private Equity and Lending Conference focuses on opportunities for investment in micro-hospitals and other specialty hospitals. It is authored by our colleagues Jeff Peterson and Sarah Mick.

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Focused Hospital Investments: Psych Hospitals, Micro-Hospitals, Surgical Hospitals, Specialty Hospitals & Other Hospital Investments – 5 key points

By Jeff Peterson and Sarah Mick

Investors’ and providers’ interest in micro-hospitals and other specialty hospitals has grown as the delivery of healthcare has increasingly shifted from large, full-service acute care hospitals to smaller, lower cost, and more focused settings, according to experts who spoke on a panel at McGuireWoods 15^th Annual Healthcare and Life Sciences Private Equity and Finance Conference on February 21.

Experts included Samuel Cappellanti, President, Bellwether Group, LLC and Jeffrey Peterson, Partner, McGuireWoods LLP with Rex Burgdorfer, Vice President, Juniper Advisory as the panel moderator.

Here are five key points from the panel discussion.

1. Facilities such as micro-hospitals, psychiatric hospitals and other specialty hospitals have been touted as having the capacity to offer lower cost, patient-centric care that is more highly tailored to the applicable populations’ needs. Micro-hospitals, in particular, can play an important role in areas where there is not enough demand for a full-sized/full-service hospital and can serve as a backup to community hospitals in other areas. When part of a larger healthcare system, these micro-hospitals can serve as a portal into the healthcare system for higher acuity patients.

2. A significant amount of recent activity in the specialized hospital field has involved partnerships and joint ventures among specialty operators, health systems, real estate investment trusts, and private equity funds. For example, private equity-backed Emerus has partnered with large health systems such as Dignity Health and Baylor Scott & White Health. REITs have often been involved in such deals helping to defray some of the initial capital costs.

3. Many larger hospitals and health systems have faced challenges due to economic pressures and uncertainty from reimbursement programs, such as potential changes with the 340B drug discount program and site-neutral payment policies, healthcare-related budget cuts in the President’s proposed Federal budget and continued emphasis on value-based care coupled with declining fee-for-service rates. This pressure not only affects existing hospitals and health systems, but it makes them re-think where to spend their limited capital in order to best serve their patient populations and fulfill their missions.

4. The new Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, indicated that he is open to rethinking the ban on new physician-owned hospitals. If these ownership restrictions are lifted, it could present significant opportunities in the hospital sector for private equity investors in partnership with physician investors.

5. It appears that in response to the surge in micro-hospitals, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance in late 2017 on the statutory definition of “hospital” and whether a hospital is “primarily engaged” in providing inpatient services. This guidance could present certain growth challenges to micro-hospitals and smaller specialty hospitals. CMS clarified that a hospital must have two inpatients at the time of survey in order for surveyors to directly observe the actual provision of care to inpatients. Additionally, CMS clarified that the use of benchmarks for average daily census and average length of stay will be two primary factors utilized to determine whether a hospital is “primarily engaged” in providing inpatient services. These hospitals and investors in this space will want to pay particular attention to these factors, among the others that CMS states it will consider in such an analysis.

The next in our series of posts sharing key takeaways from panels at the Healthcare & Life Sciences Private Equity and Lending Conference focuses on opportunities for investment in primary care centers. It is authored by our colleagues Holly Buckley and Josh Reynolds.

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Smart Investing in Primary Care Centers: 5 Key Takeaways

By Holly Buckley and Josh Reynolds

According to experts who spoke on a panel at the 15th Annual Healthcare and Life Sciences Private Equity and Finance Conference on February 22^nd, 2018, the practice of primary care is changing, which allows for investors to implement certain innovations to facilitate these changes. Smart investors can provide support to clinics, physicians and even patients in order to run a better and more profitable practice.

Experts included Todd Squilanti, Managing Director, InTandem Capital Partners; John Pircon, Vice President, New Harbor Capital Management, LP Arion Robbins, Principal, Revelstoke Capital Partners LLC; Susan Ford, President, Semma Health; and Marc Cabrera, Co-Head of Healthcare Investment Banking, Oppenheimer& Co. Inc.

Here are five key points from their discussion:

1. Primary care practices remain appealing for investing due to the size of the industry, the current high rate of fragmentation, as well as the opportunity for innovation within primary care practices, including the implementation of new delivery models, and concierge medicine.

2. The current patient mix who visit primary care physicians is in a state of change due to evolving demographics. New millennial patients do not want the same doctor as their parents and their health care preferences are much different. As for the growing elderly population, ease of access is now an emerging area where clinics are focusing on delivering prescriptions directly as well as providing transportation to and from the clinic.

3. Primary care physicians are starting to play a greater role as care coordinators, and investors can bring resources to these practices so that the physicians can provide efficient coordination. For example, a practice can arrange for a specialist to be present at the primacy care clinic once a week to see patients rather than either referring outside the clinic or hiring a specialist full-time.

4. The future success of primary care practices will depend on changing patient behavior. Getting patients away from urgent care clinics when symptoms have become dire and having them examined at a primary care clinic will put less strain on urgent care centers and emergency rooms. The sickest 10% of patients account for 35% of total healthcare costs.

5. Opportunities exist to actively engage patients which can lead higher collection rates. One option is to promote price transparency through primary care physicians talking directly with patients on pricing. Many clinics struggle with collecting the patient portion of bills, and part of this issue may be due to the lack understanding of the treatment price at the time the patient decides to obtain treatment. The panelists discussed how the best person to communicate the price of a procedure to a patient is their primary care physician.