Skilled Healthcare Group Inc., a Foothill Ranch-based nursing home operator, said last week it’s being bought for $630 million by Onex Corp., a Toronto-based buyout company.
Boston-based investment company Heritage Partners Inc. is Skilled Healthcare’s majority owner.
Skilled Healthcare formerly was known as Fountain View Inc. The company runs 70 nursing and assisted living homes with 6,500 residents in California, Texas, Nevada and Kansas.
It has about 9,000 workers.
Healthcare “is such a huge part of the U.S. economy,” said Robert Le Blanc, Onex’s managing director, in a published report. “It is tough to ignore, as an investor.”
The sale caps a comeback from a 2001 bankruptcy filing after Skilled Healthcare, then known as Fountain View, was hit with a $6.1 million jury award in a negligence case.
A California jury ruled then that the company was negligent in its care of a 65-year-old woman who died in 1998 after surgery to remove a blood clot. It eventually settled the case for $1.1 million.
In 2003, the nursing home operator emerged from bankruptcy and changed its name to Skilled Healthcare. Heritage Partners, which owned half of the company prior to bankruptcy, ended up with 80% of the reorganized company.
Heritage Partners said in June that it hired Credit Suisse First Boston to help it explore options for Skilled Healthcare. An initial public offering was considered.
Onex has bought six healthcare companies since the beginning of 2004, including Greenwood Village, Colo.-based American Medical Response Inc., an ambulance company.
Onex is run by Gerald Schwartz, a Toronto financier, and has assets of some $11.7 billion.
Hospital Outlook Improves
Hospital chief executives are feeling somewhat more optimistic about their financial outlook, according to a survey by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP.
The survey found that 29% of hospital chief executives believed their facilities would fail financially within the next five years, compared to 32% two years ago.
Other results include:
63% of respondents believe that there’s a need for additional funding to cover the cost of caring for patients without health insurance.
86% said they believe that clinical and quality outcome data should be publicly available.
57% of chief executives believe that providing flexible work arrangements was the most effective strategy to address the nursing shortage.
Deloitte said that it distributed questionnaires to executives at each of the nearly 5,000 hospitals in the U.S. The responses received represented 6.5% of the industry.
Eye Company Changes Focus
IntraLens Vision Inc., a Lake Forest-based eye device maker, changed its name to ReVision Optics Inc. and said that it planned to target the refractive surgery market with an emphasis on correcting presbyopia and maintaining vision through intracorneal implant lenses.
Presbyopia, the loss of the eye’s natural flexibility to focus, affects nearly everyone older than 40 and requires the use of reading glasses.
ReVision also said that it is starting research with IntraLase Corp., the Irvine-based eye laser device maker. As part of the deal, IntraLase is acquiring full rights to the name IntraLens.
Randy Alexander, ReVision’s chief executive, is a former chief executive of IntraLase.
In a statement, Alexander said IntraLase had agreed to develop software that he said would allow ReVision to produce two types of customized flaps to assist surgeons to easily inject its intracorneal lenses into a patient’s eye.
ReVision said that it’s conducting U.S. clinical trials for correcting hyperopia, or farsightedness, and also is running trials at several global sites for the presbyopia-correcting lens.
Bits and Pieces:
Arthur Southam, senior vice president, product and market management for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., presents “Health Care and Information Technology” at the Nov. 17 meeting of the Orange County Employee Benefit Council. The morning program is at the Beckman Center at the University of California, Irvine. Information: (714) 573-8605 I-Flow Corp., Lake Forest, said that it incorporated its On-Q narcotic-free pain relief system into three specialty kits for larger incision surgeries, such as obesity-related, heart and chest procedures Ista Pharmaceuticals Inc., Irvine, presented earlier this month at the BIO InvestorForum in San Francisco. Ista made presentations on its Vitrase drug at the Ophthalmic Anesthesia Society’s annual meeting in Chicago and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy’s annual meeting in San Francisco Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc., Tustin, reviewed programs to evaluate its Tarvacin drug candidate against influenza viruses, including avian flu … UCI Extension is offering a course on clinical data management Nov. 12 and 19 at its learning center in Orange. Information: (949) 824-6538.
