New York, January 3, 2023 – Albaron Partners (“Albaron”), a lower middle market private equity firm focused on healthcare services, has launched a sister company, Aspire Physician Solutions (“Aspire”). The Aspire mission is to partner with and represent physician practices, and other physician-centric healthcare companies, that are considering strategic and/or financial transactions with private equity firms, strategic buyers, hospitals or healthcare systems.
Aspire, a natural extension of Albaron’s investment platform, offers a comprehensive set of solutions to healthcare services firms designed to maximize value at every stage of the business and investment lifecycle. Aspire works with healthcare organizations in four ways: (i) investing in micro-cap firms, (ii) operational advisory services, (iii) mergers and acquisitions advisory services and (iv) financing advisory services.
Through its industry-exclusive Private Equity Incubation Initiative®, Aspire will also consider partnership opportunities with micro-cap practices that have strong growth potential and entrepreneurial, motivated, fully engaged clinical teams. There is no pre-set size requirement to participate in the Private Equity Incubation Initiative®, as all interested practices are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In addition, the Aspire operational advisory services team are experts in business transformation and operational improvement and seek to rapidly assess the functional areas of a business and identify opportunities for accelerating growth, value creation, and value capture through creative, customized solutions and Aspire team lead disciplined implementation.
Aspire and Albaron see a significant and growing opportunity set across micro-cap healthcare services that can be holistically served through Aspire. Aspire will leverage the expertise of Albaron’s elite private equity team which has successfully scaled and exited leading physician practice groups including Beyond Podiatry, the third largest podiatry group in the United States.
Sonia Ponnusamy, a partner and former COO of Albaron, is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Aspire. She explains, “Aspire has assembled what I believe to be perhaps the only fully integrated, multidisciplinary team approach to private equity investing in the mid and upper-microcap physician practice and provider-centric company market sectors. While we certainly work very effectively with practices with greater than $2 Million in annual EBITDA, our unique team approach gives us the flexibility to also work with much smaller practices. Through our Private Equity Incubation Initiative®, we can engage our operational advisory services with small practices and shepherd them through a growth plan that ultimately results in a successful liquidity event for our physician partners. Candidly, this is unique in the private equity industry.”
Albaron continues to invest in the team behind Aspire; the leadership team will include former Albaron operating partners Terry Carden and Steve Topper MD.
Terry Carden is a thirty-year veteran of senior-level healthcare operations, multi-site practice management, venture capital, and served as an executive operator for two national healthcare advisory services firms. Most recently, Terry was President and Chief Executive Officer of Health Management Resources (“HMR”), one of the nation’s leading physician practice management and physician network development firms. During his tenure at HMR, Terry managed more than eight hundred physician practice transactions and operational integrations across a myriad of specialties.
Relating to the formation of Aspire, Terry Carden states, “As the healthcare services industry continues to grow, mature and evolve, so too do the needs of physician practice groups. We believe Aspire is uniquely positioned to provide a holistic suite of flexible, expedient solutions across this landscape. We believe that Aspire will become the go-to platform for the vast and growing needs of physicians, practice groups, and other provider-centric organizations that are seeking to reap the benefits of a material liquidity event.”
Dr Topper has thirty years of experience as a leading orthopaedic hand surgeon, has also served in a variety of leadership roles, and has a track record of scaling successful healthcare businesses; including a network of independent ambulatory surgery centers in Colorado that was sold to United Health Group, achieving an 800% return on investment.
Dr Topper comments, “These are difficult times for physicians in private practice, and perhaps especially so for surgeons. They find themselves sandwiched between powerful stakeholders like hospital systems, insurance companies and large medical practice groups. The pressure to survive is real and often drives physicians to abandon their autonomy and leave private practice to join one of these physician aggregators in an employment model. To avoid this trap, it is imperative to have a plan and allies, which is exactly what Aspire brings to the table. Simply put, Aspire offers the most physician-friendly private equity model in the market, emphasizing protection of physician income, fully collaborative governance, absolutely no interference with clinical practice and decision making, and life-changing financial rewards for its physician partners.”
About Aspire
Aspire is a strategic healthcare-focused private equity investor and operating partner. Aspire was founded with the sole purpose of partnering and supporting independent physician practices and other physician-centric healthcare companies, that are considering strategic and/or financial transactions with private equity firms, strategic buyers, hospitals and healthcare systems. We invest in and provide merger and acquisition, and operational advisory services to healthcare entities, regardless of their size, that engenders growth, enhances profitability, maximizes equity value and monetizes market value for stakeholders. For more information, please visit www.aspirephysiciansolutions.com.