BelHealth Investment Partners Adds to Team

BelHealth Investment Partners has added Richard Friedman, Anurag Mehta, and Gopi Natarajan to its operating committee. Friedman served most recently as Chairman and CEO of BioScrip Inc., a publicly traded specialty pharmacy. Mehta was the co-founder of Omega Healthcare. Natarajan is also co-founder of Omega Healthcare, and serves as its president and chief executive.

PRESS RELEASE
BelHealth Investment Partners, LLC (“BelHealth”) today announced that Richard Friedman, Anurag Mehta and Gopi Natarajan have joined the Operating Committee. Collectively, the group brings 70 years of experience as healthcare founders and operators to the BelHealth team.
Mr. Friedman has 27 years of experience in the healthcare industry with a focus in generic pharmaceuticals, including specialty pharmacy, pharmacy benefit management (PBM) and infusion. Most recently he served as Chairman and CEO of BioScrip Inc., a publicly traded specialty pharmacy and PBM (Nasdaq: BIOS). During his tenure at BioScrip Inc., he was instrumental in growing the company into a $1.7 billion business and positioning it for the eventual sale of its specialty pharmacy operations to Walgreens in May of 2012. Prior to his term at BioScrip, he was Chairman and CEO of MIM Corporation (Nasdaq: MIMS), a specialty pharmaceutical and benefit fulfillment organization that partners with healthcare providers and sponsors to control prescription drug costs. Mr. Friedman took MIM public in 1996 and oversaw a number of mergers and acquisitions, including its combination with Chronimed in 2004, which created Bioscrip. Before joining MIM Corporation, Mr. Friedman served as the chief financial officer for Zenith Laboratories Inc., a leading manufacturer and distributor of generic drugs. Mr. Friedman has also held a variety of senior finance positions including chief financial officer of Goldline Laboratories, a distributor and manufacturer of generic drugs and chief financial officer for Publicker Industries, an alcohol and chemical manufacturing company.
Mr. Mehta has 23 years of experience in the healthcare industry, 12 of which have been with US and India-based healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) companies. Mr. Mehta co-founded Omega Healthcare in 2003, which has become one of the premier providers of billing, coding and healthcare revenue cycle management services with 4,000 employees across three locations in India. As founder, Mr. Mehta is responsible for finance, business development, sales and marketing activities at Omega, and has been instrumental in helping the business grow significantly each year since it was started. Prior to co-founding Omega, he was Founder and CEO of a substantial US medical billing company with back office, revenue cycle operations in India. The first 11 years of his career were spent at Bayer Corporation as a business development executive and business unit leader. Through his experience running large- scale medical billing operations in the US, Mr. Mehta fully understands the needs of today’s US revenue cycle management companies and the forces affecting their business.
Mr. Natarajan is the co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer at Omega Healthcare and has more than 22 years of experience in the US Healthcare Industry working with payers, providers and vendors. Prior to Omega, he led a $40M medical billing company in the US with 900
126 East 56th St., 10th floor New York, NY 10022
T: 347-308-7011
4100 Newport Place, Suite 255 Newport Beach, CA 92660
T: 949-200-6547
26 Harbor Park Drive
Port Washington, NY 11050
T: 516-626-5678
Page 1 of 2
employees, of which 250 were located in India. He has also gained valuable experience in IT and BPO/KPO outsourcing during senior management stints with Aetna (NYSE: AET), EDS (NYSE: EDS) and Healtheon/WebMD (Nasdaq: WBMD). Mr. Natarajan has a brilliant track record in leadership, mergers, acquisitions and integration of companies, and has been instrumental in leading small sized companies to grow into mid / large sized companies. He now spends a significant amount of his time in India, overseeing the operations and growth of Omega Healthcare. As a co- founder of Omega Healthcare, Mr. Natarajan brings an incredible amount of industry knowledge and relationships that he has built throughout the years while working in senior management positions in US-based healthcare services companies.
Richard Friedman said, “On behalf of my two other new Operating Committee members, Anurag and Gopi, we are delighted to join the BelHealth team and play an integral role in helping find great investment opportunities and using our experience to help grow the portfolio. We all have known Harold, Bert and Dennis for decades and are excited about working with them again in this fund and future BelHealth funds.”
Dennis Drislane, Chairman of BelHealth’s Operating Committee, said, “With their many years of experience in the healthcare industry, Richard, Anurag and Gopi will be extremely valuable to our portfolio companies. They have each played instrumental roles in building organizations with reach across the world. In addition, they further expand our network of relationships and provide new sources of proprietary deal flow. I look forward to the insight and key relationships they will introduce to our firm. Having them serve on the committee is great news for the fund and even better news for the organizations we acquire.”
Harold S. Blue, Managing Partner of BelHealth, commented, “I am excited about the newest additions to our Operating Committee. I have known Richard since we were in the generic industry in South Florida during the 1980s. He has incredible depth of knowledge and experience that will be tremendously valuable to our services and distribution portfolio. I have worked intimately with Gopi and Anurag for many years and most recently as Chairman of Omega Healthcare. Although Gopi and Anurag will be primarily focused on continuing to successfully grow Omega Healthcare, they bring unbelievable expertise in operating healthcare technology and services companies.”
The members of BelHealth’s Operating Committee are accomplished executives with significant experience in managing and growing healthcare companies. The Operating Committee provides the Fund’s portfolio companies with disciplined leadership and strategic planning to realize maximum growth potential.
About BelHealth Investment Partners
BelHealth Investment Partners is a private equity buyout firm focused exclusively on the small-cap healthcare industry. BelHealth acquires majority positions in healthcare companies that the BelHealth Team believes are undervalued or undermanaged and would benefit from the vast entrepreneurial and operating experience that BelHealth can deliver. BelHealth’s target sectors include Healthcare Services, Healthcare Information Technology and Healthcare Products and Distribution. The fund typically invests between $10 – 25 million per platform company. Applying an active, hands-on approach to governance, BelHealth utilizes its experience to drive revenue and profit growth and achieve superior returns for its investors.