Thursday, November 14, 2019

Carlyle Group's New Healthcare JV Raised ER Bills $25 Million


BusinessWire ran the following press release on The Carlyle Group's latest healthcare venture:

Cannae Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNNE) (“Cannae” or the “Company”) today announced that it has entered into an agreement to participate in a health care joint venture with an investment vehicle advised by an affiliate of The Carlyle Group and another investor with deep health care services experience. The joint venture will focus on acquiring, integrating and operating synergistic health care services companies in the provider and payer space.

Cannae will contribute its T-System business to the joint venture and Cannae’s joint venture partners will contribute equity capital to enable it to acquire other complementary health care services companies. As part of this effort, T-System has also entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a leading provider of coding and clinical documentation services to domestic health care providers which will be funded by the joint venture. 

At closing, it is anticipated that Cannae will be a minority shareholder of the joint venture and have all of its T-System intercompany debt repaid, which totaled approximately $60 million as of September 30, 2019. The investment vehicle affiliated with The Carlyle Group will be the majority controlling shareholder of the joint venture. 
T-Systems helped increase ER bills by $24.8 million for residents of Savannah, Georgia.  The case study showed how Carlyle's new JV will not bring healthcare costs down:

A few months after transitioning to T-System’s RevCycle+® service, Memorial University Medical Center’s revenue quickly increased to the numbers T-System had estimated. And, just a few months later, revenue continued to improve even further to $1,269 per patient visit, from the original baseline of $1,040 per patient visit.
Results
• $24.8 million gross annual revenue increase:
• $259 increase per patient for facility E/M charges\
• $31 increase per patient for facility procedure charges
• $502 increase per patient for observation services charges
A higher level of service was assigned for about 65 percent of the ED patients, and a lower level of service was assigned to three percent. Also, a higher level of service was assigned for about 70 percent of observation cases.
Healthcare is no longer about serving people.  At a recent reunion I asked healthcare professionals: "How has healthcare changed over the last few decades?"  Nurses, physicians and nurse practitioners said universally.  "It's all about money and numbers."

That's because the greed and leverage boys have infected healthcare.  The system may be septic.

Update 6-22-20:   The PEU JV added Trust HCS in January.  TrustHCS, based in Springfield, Mo., is a provider of staffing and advisory services for coding, clinical documentation improvement, denial management and coding education solutions.