After placing offers for a complete of 27 urgent-care facilities over the previous yr, the leaders of Ardent Well being Companions Inc. are planning different types of ambulatory enlargement whereas retaining an eye fixed out for system acquisitions.
Nashville-based Ardent, which went public final summer season, earlier this month introduced the acquisition of 18 urgent-care websites—six in New Mexico, a dozen in Oklahoma—from NextCare Pressing Take care of an undisclosed sum. That deal got here after the acquisition final yr of 9 clinics in East Texas and Kansas that additionally served to develop Ardent’s community in these markets.
Talking on the current forty third Annual JPMorgan Healthcare Convention, President and CEO Marty Bonick mentioned his staff desires to maintain increasing in its eight mid-sized markets—the place it runs 30 hospitals and greater than 200 different websites of care—in addition to develop into new ones. The corporate has about $850 million in liquidity to place to work towards that aim and ambulatory enlargement is excessive on the precedence checklist because it has a share of solely 3 p.c of ambulatory revenues in its markets versus 21 p.c of hospital revenues.
“The following focus that we count on to see is round ambulatory surgical procedure middle progress,” Bonick mentioned on the JPMorgan convention. “We all know there’s alternative for added facilities. These are prone to be extra on the de novo aspect […] given the present buying and selling multiples of these property. However we do know that we’ve bought doctor curiosity and demand in addition to the affected person progress to help that.”
Extra urgent-care progress is also within the playing cards and Bonick mentioned that might come within the type of different acquisitions or de novo growth. He additionally talked about that freestanding imaging facilities and emergency departments in addition to microhospitals are avenues for community progress.
Bonick and his staff will look to emulate the success of Ardent’s urgent-care push in East Texas when it comes to rising its affected person base. Bonick advised the JPMorgan convention that 45 p.c of the individuals in final yr’s acquisition had been new to Ardent. Inside 30 days of the deal, he added, 15% of the sufferers of these clinics had scheduled follow-up care with different Ardent suppliers.
“We had about 150,000 admissions [last year] however handled over 1.2 million individuals,” Bonick mentioned. “That’s key to our shopper technique when it comes to how will we develop the numerator […] via no matter modality works for them—whether or not that’s in-person care in a hospital, outpatient care in a facility or a virtual-care atmosphere.”
Shares of Ardent (Ticker: ARDT) had been altering fingers at $14.06 in noon buying and selling Jan. 21, down from their current ranges of roughly $16, the worth at which they went public. Traders bought off the inventory after Bonick and CFO Alfred Lumsdaine famous, amongst different issues, within the runup to the JPMorgan gathering that doctor providers value will increase have continued longer than beforehand anticipated. With the inventory at roughly $14, Ardent’s market capitalization is correct round $2 billion.