Varsity Healthcare Partners recaps newly created Emergency Care Partners

Varsity Healthcare Partners is making a push into emergency medicine by creating a new platform company: Emergency Care Partners.

The Los Angeles PE firm completed a joint recapitalization and growth-capital partnership with the shareholders of Professional Emergency Medicine Management and Professional Emergency Physicians Associates.

Varsity took a majority ownership position in connection with the transaction, while management and clinical leaders of both entities will continue to be meaningful equity owners of the newly combined company.

Headquartered in Lafayette, Louisiana, Emergency Care Partners focuses on hospitals with emergency departments that encounter 50,000 or fewer annual patients.

The company provides emergency medicine and emergency-department-management services to hospitals in secondary and tertiary markets across Louisiana.

Its clinical network includes 11 hospital customers, which are supported by 160 emergency-medicine physicians and 150 advanced-practice providers.

For Varsity, the transaction follows its November investment in Orthopaedic Institute, the largest provider of orthopedic services and ancillary offerings in north-central Florida.

The lower-middle-market firm was one of the first movers in the musculoskeletal-care segment, similar to Varsity’s earlier plays in vision and dermatology.

Varsity, which partners with founders, entrepreneurs and management in the healthcare services field, also backs primary care provider Family Care Partners.

Varsity is investing out of its second fund, which raised $300 million in January 2017.

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton provided legal counsel to Varsity on the ECP transaction.

Action Item: Read more about Varsity’s thesis around orthopedics