15 Companies That Hospitals and Surgery Centers Should Know

1. VMG Health. Headquartered in Dallas and Nashville, VMG is one of the leading valuation firms in the healthcare industry. Their primary practice areas include: business valuation, professional services valuations, transaction advisory services, and joint venture relationship development. Formed by extremely bright people, VMG Health serves a diverse range of healthcare clients from around the world, including but not limited to: surgery centers, rehab hospitals, and dialysis centers. www.vmghealth.com

2. Ambulatory Surgical Centers of America. ASCOA rigorously helps its partners achieve outstanding results. The company was formed by Brent Lambert, MD, FACS; Tom Bombardier, MD, FACS; and George Violin, MD. Its senior leadership team now also includes CEO Luke Lambert, CFA, and CFO Robert Westergard, CPA, as well as several others. The company has grown to be one of the best privately held ASC chains in the country. It currently oversees 34 facilities in many different states. Its typical model includes a minority ownership interest plus a management and development agreement. ASCOA is one of the most highly competent companies in the ASC arena. It focuses on turnarounds and new centers. www.ascoa.com

3. Serbin Surgery Center Billing. Serbin Surgery Center Billing is one of the best billing and collection companies in the surgery center business. It was founded by Caryl Serbin, a true leader in the industry with the goal of providing much-needed and requested services to ambulatory surgery centers — expert and accurate coding, billing, and collections. SCB employs certified and experienced personnel with ASC backgrounds and is an outstanding company that has worked hard to develop an outstanding billing component over the last several years. It aims to increase surgery centers’ revenues while decreasing their stress. www.ascbilling.com

4. Provation Medical. Provation is one of the true leaders in information technology services for surgery centers. It has an outstanding group of products and a tremendous knowledge of the ASC business, including ProVation HER, an electronic health record designed specifically for ASCs. It has terrific leaders in this field, like Chuck Meisel, and has done a great job of applying industry knowledge to development and implementation of their products. www.provationmedical.com

5. Surgical Notes. Founded by Jeff Blankinship, Surgical Notes has become a leader in the software-side of ambulatory surgical center information technology. It is an outstanding user-friendly company and extremely service oriented. Surgical Notes provides transcription services to over 450 surgery centers and well over 6,500 physicians in roughly 42 states and their latest software application, the VMR Express, allows facilities to print patient charts with ADT included on each form by extracting the patient information directly from the Practice Management System. Surgical Notes is headquartered in Dallas. www.surgicalnotes.com

6. Blue Chip Surgical Center Partners. Blue Chip focuses extensively on spine, multi-specialty and physician/hospital joint venture centers. It was founded by ASC veteran Jeff Leland who was previously a developer of ASCs at ASCOA. It also has great leadership, and managed care expertise in Jay Rom, Beth Ann Johnston, RN, BS, Richard Roski, MD, FACS, and several others. With several highly profitable, physician-led centers in operation around the company and a number of projects in the works, it has been remarkably successful. The company has a reputation for delivering on its commitments and forging strong physician relationships. It holds an equity stake in its projects and also serves as a managing partner. www.bluechipsurgical.com

7. Practice Partners in Healthcare. PPH is led by president and CEO Larry Taylor. Mike Rickman is the chief operating officer. Marc Goff, a 30-year ASC veteran, also recently joined the leadership team. PPH is a minority owner of ASCs. It is a privately-held, Birmingham, Ala.-based company. It specializes in de novo and turnaround situations. PPH owns minority interests in several centers. It charges no development fee. The company model is physician-centric and focused on hands-on management. The PPH team operates at the highest levels of responsiveness and dedication to our physician and hospital partners. www.practicepartners.org

8. Pinnacle III. Pinnacle III is quickly evolving as a leading provider of consulting and management services to physician-driven surgery centers in the areas of hospital joint-ventures, turnarounds and hospital outpatient strategies. Pinnacle III has increased its management depth with the leadership of Rob Carrera, Rick Dehart and Scott Thomas. The company is on the short list of leading firms that provide both equity and non-equity models, though it is focusing on expansion of its surgical network through equity ownership. In addition to its development services, Pinnacle III provides a wide array of other services including, but, not limited to; ASC management, coding, billing and collecting, facility reviews, feasibility studies and financial forecasting. www.pinnacleiii.com

9. Anesthesia Healthcare Partners. AHP is a provider of professional anesthesia services to hospitals and surgery centers, of all sizes, across the country. AHP specializes in managing the daily anesthesia operations, billing for all anesthesia services and recruiting the best permanent and locum nurse anesthetists. AHP’s broad range of anesthesia solutions continue to “raise the bar” for the facilities we serve. AHP’s anesthesia practices are typically made up of anesthesiologist and certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) teams, who are dedicated to a single facility. Its serves facilities in all 50 states. www.ahphealthcare.com

10. Congero Development. This company, which was traditionally a developer, has extensively grown to provide management and development services to surgical centers and other types of healthcare facilities. Led by Bruce Wallace and Kathy Wallace, the company has tremendous references and reviews on their services. Bruce Wallace, the CEO for Congero Development, remains bullish about ambulatory surgical centers and about medical real estate in general. Congero is a minority owner in its centers and helps with the syndication and all aspects of the operating company. It also brings a tremendous amount of real estate experience to the company. www.congerodev.com

11. HealthCare Appraisers. HealthCare Appraisers is a leading valuation firm in the healthcare space. It does a tremendous amount of work with surgery centers and with hospitals providing fair market value opinions for compensation and service arrangements, business valuation, consulting and advisory services, and litigation support services. HealthCare Appraisers has outstanding leadership and has grown tremendously over the last few years to have offices in Florida, Chicago, Dallas and Denver. HealthCare Appraisers’ clients range from solo physicians to multi-billion dollar corporations. www.healthcareappraisers.com

12. Surgical Anesthesia Services. Surgical Anesthesia Services (SAS) delivers comprehensive anesthesia services exclusively to ASCs across the United States. SAS removes the hassle of securing quality anesthesia coverage. Each ASC receives a dedicated anesthesia team, which does not rotate between competing facilities. Its anesthesia team works cooperatively with an ASC’s administrator and nursing staff to help contain anesthesia supply costs and drive operating room efficiency. www.surgicalanesthesia.net

13. National Surgical Care. NSC’s surgery centers performed more than 111,000 cases in 2008, and had more than 325 surgeon partners and six hospital partners. NSC is led by Sami Abbasi, chairman and CEO; Rick Pence, president and COO, and Greg Cunniff, CFO. It has expedited growth in 2008 and has a very disciplined and professional management approach. www.natsurgcare.com

14. Spine Surgical Innovation. Located in South Easton, Mass., Spine Surgical Innovation (SSI) is one of the leading companies in the spine industry. It is lead by Chris Zorn and has done a tremendous job of increasing its footprint within the surgery center and physician-owned hospital field. SSI offers numerous products including the Swivel Standard Port System, MIS Instruments and other spine instruments. www.spinesurgicalinnovation.com

15. ASCs Inc. ASCs Inc. assists surgery centers in finding find corporate partners, obtaining valuations and finalizing purchase proposals. It has put together the most complete database of surgery center profiles in the industry and claims to “know what corporate buyers want.” Jon Vick, the founder and president of ASCs Inc., has long worked with partners to help develop partnerships between management companies and physician-led surgery centers. He has a remarkable rolodex and does a terrific job of working with people in the surgery center space, often speaking on and publishing journal articles about ASC-related issues. www.ascs-inc.com