UnitedHealth Agrees to Buy Payments Firm Equian -- Update
June 20 2019 - 7:30PM
Dow Jones News
By Cara Lombardo
UnitedHealth Group Inc. has agreed to buy health-care payments
firm Equian LLC from its private-equity owner for about $3.2
billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Equian, owned by New Mountain Capital, offers payment-processing
services for health-care companies and insurers and touts an
ability to reduce mistakes that cause overpayment.
It is likely that UnitedHealth would merge Equian into its Optum
health-services arm, a rapidly growing part of its business that
caters to insurers, hospitals and other health-care companies.
Equian would add to its array of offerings and help Optum branch
out beyond health care, since Equian has other types of insurers as
clients as well.
UnitedHealth, with a market value of roughly $235 billion, is
the parent of the largest U.S. health insurer, UnitedHealthcare.
The company is known as a prolific acquirer. Health care has been
the second-most active sector in mergers and acquisitions this year
after technology, with more than $260 billion of deals announced so
far, according to Dealogic.
Equian's platform handles more than $500 billion in health-care
claims a year and serves nine of the 10 largest health-care payers,
according to New Mountain. The company is based in Indianapolis.
Among other services, it analyzes claims both before and after they
are paid, seeking to find inappropriate or unnecessary bills and
blocking or recovering overpayments.
Equian was the result of a merger between its predecessor
company and Trover Solutions Inc. after both were acquired by New
Mountain in 2015. New Mountain paid $225 million for Equian's
predecessor.
The sale to UnitedHealth is the culmination of a monthslong
auction process.
New Mountain, based in New York, manages more than $20 billion
and has invested in several health-care information-technology
companies including Ciox Health and Signify Health. It reaped a big
gain recently when one of its investments, pharmaceutical-chemicals
maker Avantor Inc., went public.
Anna Wilde Mathews contributed to this article.
Write to Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 20, 2019 19:15 ET (23:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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