Convey Health Solutions Partners with New Mountain Capital and Eir Partners

Leading provider of benefits and compliance administration solutions to government-sponsored health plans positioned for continued growth and innovation

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. & New York

Convey Health Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of technology solutions for government-sponsored health insurance plans, today announced that it has partnered with New Mountain Capital, LLC, a growth-oriented investment firm that currently manages over $15 billion in assets.

Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, FL, Convey delivers business process technology and solutions that simplify processes for Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage programs while driving regulatory compliance and reducing associated administration costs. Convey’s exclusive healthcare focus and proprietary technology platform allow it to efficiently manage end-to-end health insurance processes for its customers, from eligibility and enrollment processing to premium billing and payment processing, reconciliation and other related services.

“We are excited to be partnering with New Mountain Capital and look forward to working with their team to continue to bring best-in-class technology and solutions to our customers,” said Steve Farrell, CEO of Convey. “Given New Mountain’s focus on building businesses and driving growth, we anticipate having more resources to help us continue to enhance our services and to deliver even more value to our customers.”

“Convey is a clear leader in compliance-driven benefits administration, and we are excited to support the Company in its next phase of growth,” said Matt Holt, Managing Director of New Mountain. “Since its inception, Convey has been completely dedicated to ensuring the success of its clients. We look forward to working with Convey’s management team to accelerate growth while maintaining the same high level of customer service that has always been at the core of the Company’s focus.”

Eir Partners is co-investing in the transaction with New Mountain Capital. Eir Partners, along with TripleTree, advised New Mountain in the transaction. Houlihan Lokey represented Convey in the transaction.

About Convey
Convey Health Solutions is a specialized healthcare technology and business process outsourcing firm that is committed to providing clients with healthcare-specific, compliant member support solutions utilizing technology, engagement, and analytics. Through its centers in Florida, Arizona, Illinois, and the Philippines, Convey Health Solutions creates better business results and better healthcare consumer experiences on behalf of business customers and partners. The company’s clients include some of the nation’s leading health insurance companies and pharmacy benefit management firms. Their healthcare-focused teams help several million Americans each year to navigate the complex Part D Medicare and Medicare Advantage landscape. Learn more at www.ConveyHealthSolutions.com.

About New Mountain Capital
New Mountain Capital is a New York based investment firm that emphasizes business building and growth, rather than debt, as it pursues long-term capital appreciation. The firm currently manages private equity, public equity, and credit funds with over $15 billion in aggregate capital commitments. New Mountain seeks out what it believes to be the highest quality growth leaders in carefully selected industry sectors and then works intensively with management to build the value of these companies. For more information on New Mountain Capital, please visit www.newmountaincapital.com.

About Eir Partners
Eir Partners is a New York City based investment company and strategic partnership focused exclusively on the dynamic healthcare and technology marketplace. Eir’s flexible model allows for customized collaboration to accelerate disruption, innovation and growth through direct investment and the augmentation of strategic development and acquisition sourcing. The investment model allows for direct platform investments as the sole investor or alongside strategic or other blue chip private equity institutions. Targeted stages of investment include growth equity through control buyouts. For more information on Eir, please visit www.eirpartners.com.

Contacts
For New Mountain Capital:
Abernathy MacGregor
Dana Gorman, 212-371-5999

Eir Partners Sources and Executes 3rd Acquisition in 9 Months for Equian

Eir Partners Sources and Executes 3rd Acquisition in 9 Months for Equian
Equian Announces Acquisition of T3 Worldwide

Indianapolis, IN

Equian announced the completed acquisition of T3 Worldwide, furthering the company’s capabilities to deliver technology driven, accurate, and actionable pre and post payment integrity solutions. The acquisition of T3 supports Equian’s strategy to lead the market with the most comprehensive suite of solutions focused on utilizing technology, data and expertise to drive client savings. The company will continue its balanced strategy of internal innovation and acquisitions that deliver actionable data analytics, scalable partnerships, and content rich results to increase savings for its clients and enable Equian to expand across its key markets.

Founded in 2006 and based in Norwalk, Connecticut, T3 Worldwide provides a technology platform which enables over 30 million payment integrity transactions a month for some of the largest payers in the Commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid markets.

Equian CEO, Scott Mingee, stated, “This is a very strategic acquisition for us, and adds one of the only commercial grade technology platforms in use by the end market of large scale payers. Our clients want a partner who is aligned with them and helps drive continuous improvement, and we understand the need for flexibility given the complexities and ever changing regulatory environment, evolving reimbursement strategies and payment modalities in our market. Adoption and utilization of T3’s platform by their end clients is a testament to the power of the solution, and we are excited to bring this offering to our customers. This platform will enhance and accelerate our data management and content strategy, allowing us to expand our research & development and deliver our results more quickly – ultimately helping our clients pay the right amount to the right party at the right time.  The T3 executive team shares our vision and passion for innovation and will be a key part of our future innovation and transformations as they are proven industry experts and leaders.”

Younes Ghanian, Executive Partner of T3 added, “T3 has always been focused on transparency and sharing the content and logic of our audits with our clients. We look at post pay and pre pay modalities for clients to determine how we can correct most of the problem claims in time to avoid costly interaction with providers recouping overpayments. Through early meetings with Equian, it was obvious we shared this common philosophy.  If we can find a way to correct an error upstream for payers, we do it.”

T3 Worldwide marks the third successful strategic acquisition sourced and completed by Eir Partners into Equian in the last 9 months including Trover and Nurse Audit.  “The partnership between Equian and Eir Partners has been incredibly effective since we started,” commented Brett Carlson, CEO of Eir Partners, “I look forward to continuing to help Equian become the leader in the payment integrity market.”

About Equian
Equian is a leading end-to-end payment integrity organization. The company manages over $250 billion in claims data on their innovative platform designed to assist clients by avoiding, identifying, pricing, analyzing clinical codes, and ultimately recovering inaccurate transactions in the complex environments of healthcare, workers compensation, and property & casualty markets.  Equian acts on data to pay the right party, the right amount, at the right time delivering over $1.25 billion in actionable savings throughout the payment spectrum.

About T3 Worldwide
T3 was founded with an intent to create an auditing solution different from anything in the market. Their unique technology streamlines the auditing function across the enterprise and creates a platform that helps clients improve productivity and pay claims correctly the first time. T3 takes a systematic approach to identifying root causes to improve accuracy and fixing recurring errors with a solution set that is better, faster and more cost-effective. In an industry that has capitalized on health plan inefficiencies, T3 has opted to take a different approach and align its incentives with its clients.

Contact:
Brett S. Carlson
203.979.8939
bcarlson@eirpartners.com

Equian Announces Acquisition of Nurse Audit

Adds Further Depth to Market-Leading Payment Integrity Platform

Equian announced the completed acquisition of Nurse Audit, adding further depth to the market's leading end-to-end payment integrity services platform for the healthcare, workers compensation, and property & casualty industries.

Founded in 1994 and based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Nurse Audit provides comprehensive audit services to major health insurance carriers. The company specializes in audit and review programs, including provider audits, DRG validation, CPT code and clinical reviews, high-cost implant reviews, high-cost pharmaceutical reviews, and bill negotiation services.

Equian CEO, Scott Mingee, stated, "With the addition of Nurse Audit, we add significant expertise and new content to the Equian platform that will create meaningful additional value for our combined client base. In today's complicated reimbursement environment, our clients desire a strategic partner with a broad range of capabilities to assist in their payment accuracy programs. Nurse Audit complements our existing payment integrity services with a market-leading, coding-focused approach that will increase the savings we deliver to our customers."

Sharon Weston, CEO of Nurse Audit, added, "We are very excited to be joining the Equian team and look forward to continuing to provide the same gold standard quality of service to our clients, while also being able to offer a highly attractive expanded suite of solutions."

About Equian
Equian is a leading end-to-end Payment Integrity organization. The company's platform manages over $250 billion of claims data in their innovative platform designed to assist clients by avoiding, identifying, pricing, analyzing clinical codes, and ultimately recovering inaccurate transactions in the complex environments of healthcare, workers compensation, and property & casualty markets. Equian acts on data to pay the right party for the right amount at the right time delivering over $1.25 billion in actionable savings throughout the payment spectrum.

Contact Information
Mike Morrison
CRO
317-806-2128

The Morning Leverage

The Morning Leverage: Summoning a Norse God to Invest in Health-Care

By David Smagalla

Eir Partners, set up by a former executive of Great Point Partners, is the latest to join the ranks of health-care investors, Amy Or reports for this morning’s LBO Wire.

Brett Carlson, most recently a principal at Greenwich, Conn.-based health-care investor Great Point, launched Eir Partners, a New York-based health care-focused investment firm, in October. The firm is named after the goddess of healing in Norse mythology and reflects Mr. Carlson’s Scandinavian heritage.

For its first deal, Eir advised New Mountain Capital in its acquisition of Great Point Partners’ Equian LLC and Abry Partners’ Trover Solutions Inc. to form a payment integrity and cost-containment platform for the health-care and property and casualty insurance industries. Eir also took a minority stake in the merged entity.

Mr. Carlson said that Eir, which doesn’t have a fund currently, invests in a wide spectrum of health-care deals, including services and medical devices, but noted that his focus now is on health-care technology.

Write to David Smagalla at david.smagalla@wsj.com

New Mountain Merges Great Point's Equian, Abry's Trover Solutions

New Mountain Merges Great Point's Equian, Abry's Trover Solutions

Amy Or
(c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

New Mountain Capital acquired Great Point Partners ' Equian LLC and merged it with Abry Partners ' Trover Solutions Inc . to form a payment integrity and cost-containment platform for the health-care and property and casualty insurance industries.

The merged company will provide software and services, including prepayment clinical coding review and bill review, postpayment data mining and provider audits, as well as subrogation services for payers, New Mountain said in a news release.

The combined entity will have more than 1,100 professionals serving over 300 health-care and insurance customers across the U.S., including nine of the top 10 health-care payers, the news release said.

The combined company records over $200 million in revenue, said New Mountain Managing Director Matthew Holt .

"We will be accelerating investment in the merged company's technology and developing additional products, focusing on technology," Mr. Holt said. He added that the nation's "shift to value-based care" will create more complexity in areas like coding and billing, and foster demand for the services offered by Equian and Trover.

Under the Affordable Care Act, a pilot program has been launched that encourages hospitals and medical service providers to build health-care systems, called Accountable Care Organizations, that deliver comprehensive care to patients, with the goal of improving the health of the population they cover and thus reducing care costs.

Scott Mingee , currently chief executive of Equian, will assume the CEO role in the merged entity, while Trover CEO Rob Bader will serve as the executive chairman of the combined company, Mr. Holt said.

New Mountain sourced the two deals on a proprietary basis, at a time when private equity firms are bemoaning the high valuations on deals, especially when the sale processes are mediated by intermediaries such as investment banks.

"We met with Equian management last May and indicated to them that we were interested in buying and merging the two companies together in order to build a new leader in the sector," Mr. Holt said. "Management was very positive about our thesis."

Great Point acquired Indianapolis-based Equian. then known as Health Systems International LLC, for an undisclosed sum in 2007 . Rebranded as Equian in March 2014, Equian has made a number of add-on acquisitions during Great Point's ownership, including the January acquisition of Assist Group Inc., a Lakewood, Colo.-based prepayment technology and services company.

Abry acquired Trover in 2011 from fellow private equity firm Tailwind Capital Partners . The Louisville, Ky.,-based company said on its website it helps recover more than $340 million annually for its clients.

The investment comes out of New Mountain Partners IV LP, which closed with $4.13 billion in October 2014. Eir Partners, of New York, advised New Mountain on the transactions.

Mr. Holt said Eir, an investment firm which focuses on health care, also took a minority stake in the combined company. Eir is a new firm launched in October by Brett Carlson , who was mostly recently the chief executive of iVantage Health Analytics Inc., a health analytics company that Great Point Partners sold to Chartis Group in November.

"This space is particular exciting. The complexity of health-care payment is increasing and these solutions are making the payment process more efficient," Mr. Carlson said, adding that he believes there is opportunity to build leaders in the technology-enabled, clinically-focused payment integrity area.

New Mountain's Mr. Holt said the new platform formed by Equian and Trover is his firm's latest push to back more technology-enabled companies serving the health-care industry.

"This is the way to use technology-to reduce costs and reduce errors in the health-care market. We have been spending lots of time proactively behind this theme," Mr. Holt said.

The New York firm last year bought health-care information technology company HealthPort Inc . from Abry Partners , and merged the Alpharetta, Ga., provider of medical information access management and compliance services for health-care organizations and insurance payers with LLR-backed information management services provider IOD Inc. and medical record retrieval company ECS. All three deals were sourced on a proprietary basis, Mr. Holt said.

The merger of Equian and Trover tops a busy year for New Mountain.

"New Mountain may have had its best year ever in the last 12 months, returning over $2 billion of cash and acquiring some great companies in proprietary transactions," Mr. Holt said.

New Mountain in July agreed to sell SNL Financial LC to McGraw Hill Financial Inc. for about $2.23 billion in cash after acquiring it at an enterprise value of $450 million four years earlier. The Charlottesville, Va., company provides data, commentary and services for banking, real estate, energy and other sectors.

On the investment side, New Mountain in June took private Zep Inc. , an Atlanta-based manufacturer and marketer of consumable chemical packaged goods selling high-performance chemicals for cleaning and maintenance purposes in commercial, industrial, institution and consumer settings.

In February, New Mountain bought Diversified Foodservice Supply Inc., a distributor of maintenance, repair and operation parts, supplies and equipment to the food-service industry, from KRG Capital Partners .

"It's been a very fruitful year for us," Mr. Holt said.

http://www.equian.com

http://www.troversolutions.com

http://www.newmountaincapital.com

http://www.gppfunds.com

http://www.abry.com

http://www.eirpartners.com

Write to Amy Or at amy.or@wsj.com

Former Great Point Executive Sets Up Health-Care Investment Firm

Former Great Point Executive Sets Up Health-Care Investment Firm

Eir Partners, set up by former executive of Great Point Partners , has joined the fray of health-care investing.

Brett Carlson -most recently a principal at Greenwich, Conn.-based health-care investor Great Point-launched Eir, a New York-based health care-focused investment firm, in October. The firm is named after the goddess of healing in Norse mythology and reflects Mr. Carlson's Scandinavian heritage.

For its first deal, Eir advised New Mountain Capital in its acquisition of Great Point Partners’ Equian LLC and Abry Partners’ Trover Solutions Inc . to form a payment integrity and cost-containment platform for the health-care and property and casualty insurance industries with over $200 million in annual revenue. Eir also took a minority stake in the merged entity.

Mr. Carlson said that Eir, which doesn't have a fund currently, invests in a wide spectrum of health-care deals, including services and medical devices, but noted that his focus now is on health-care technology.

"Even though the government has had massive influence on adoption, increasing regulatory requirements and reporting standards, health-care IT has much less regulatory oversight relative to other market verticals like life science and care delivery," Mr. Carlson said. "Capital can be deployed efficiently and innovation can spread more quickly."

Mr. Carlson is the latest in a new generation of managers breaking out on their own. He has a background in both investing and health-care information technology, after nine years at Great Point.

In the last 15 months there, he also assumed the role of chief executive of former Great Point portfolio company iVantage Health Analytics. Portland, Maine-based iVantage is an advisory and business analytics services company that provides hospitals with the technology, content and know-how to gain actionable insights as they transition to value-based care models, instead of a model that is based on the amount of services they provide.

With the sale of iVantage to strategic advisory firm Chartis Group in November, Mr. Carlson ended the Great Point chapter of his career.

He said Eir is interested in "disruptive companies in the technology-enabled service world where we think there is a huge opportunity for partnership and scale across all the major health-care constituents from the consumer to the bricks and mortar."

Mr. Carlson said he plans to raise a fund next year, but declined to give details on the size. Meanwhile, he said he would leverage the operational experience and relationships he had during his tenure at iVantage and Great Point to source and invest with both private equity and strategic investors.

As a result of the partners' diverse backgrounds, Mr. Carlson said Eir will have the flexibility to back companies at various phases of growth, from early stage to mature buyout.

"I wanted a flexible platform that didn't have the one-size-fits-all approach or have a narrow mandate," he said. "For later stage companies, they may seek Eir partnership in strategic development or acquisition sourcing, whereas an earlier stage company may want to leverage our source distribution relationship or other strategic relationship."

"I'm not into seed investing, as I'm not going to take binary risks in a technology platform," he added.

Mr. Carlson is a member of the board of directors at Connecture Inc. of Brookfield, Wis., a Web-based consumer shopping platform for health insurance. He is also a board member of Citra Health Solutions Inc., a Jacksonville, Fla., provider of analytics-based care management services and related technology.

Eir Partners Officially Launches in New York

Eir Partners Officially Launches in New York.
Sets Sights on Healthcare.

New York, New York - Eir Partners, a strategic partnership and investment company focused exclusively on the healthcare and technology marketplace, announced today that it has officially launched the platform in New York.

Eir, named after the Scandinavian goddess of health and medicine, aims to partner with companies and investors to allow for customized collaboration to accelerate disruption, innovation and growth.  Having agreements with multiple sources of capital, Eir has the ability to make direct platform investments, co-investments alongside institutional or strategic investors, or partner with companies directly to accelerate strategic development.

“We recognize that many companies and investors can benefit from an Eir partnership but that the one-size fits all approach would restrict our ability to be effective and to create symbiotic relationships,” commented Brett S. Carlson, founder of Eir Partners, “we welcome the opportunity to work with companies at different stages of their maturity and to help execute on accelerated growth agendas.”

Targeted areas of focus for the firm include healthcare technology, technology-enabled services, consumer retail and other health related sectors. 

“Many people ask me about the origin of Eir, and I jokingly respond that I thought Greek mythology has received more than its fair share of reference in the business world,” added Carlson, “but given my commitment to healthcare and my original Scandinavian heritage, I thought it worked quite well.  I look forward to introducing everyone to Eir soon.”

Prior to Eir, Carlson spent 9 years as a principal at Great Point Partners, a leading health care focused investment firm responsible for their technology, tech enabled and payer services investing effort and as Chief Executive Officer at iVantage Health Analytics.  He is also a Board Member at Connecture, (Nasdaq: CXNR), a consumer shopping and personalized decision support company and Citra Health Solutions, a provider of technology and services for value based enablement.

Find out more about Eir at www.eirpartners.com.