Management consulting firm Huron Consulting Group recently announced the formation of a new consulting arm dedicated to securing clients in the skilled nursing and long-term care industries. Huron, located in Chicago and offering management consulting services to the healthcare, life sciences, commercial, and higher education industries, is directing its new team to serve as an interface between for-profit healthcare operators and private equity firms, institutional investors, and lenders.
The team is led by Tony Riso, former CEO of Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors, and features former Omega Healthcare Investors managing director of acquisitions Sara Veit, former Welltower investment executive Andrew Brainard, and Birchwood Healthcare Partners CIO Dan Sullivan. The new consulting arm is developing a software analytics system that will leverage underutilized operator data to produce standardized reporting across different operators. This will provide an in-depth look at information valuable to both management and investors. Such tools are typically the purview of large real-estate investment trusts, giving this team a significant competitive advantage in an often-fragmented space.
“We’re creating… a really sophisticated system that would only be available to the largest equity providers...The medium and smaller equity investor and operator can’t do that because they just don’t have the scale, and the market is still fragmented enough that most of the buildings are in smaller and medium sized equity providers, smaller and medium sized operators, and I think that we can really add a lot of value that way.”
With the combined skilled nursing and long-term care markets currently sitting at a value of nearly $600 billion, the playing field appears rich with opportunities for both operators and investors, and Huron is expecting to serve as a much-needed link between operators, investors, and government as the industry continues its growth. The new consulting arm has attracted a handful of operators, investors, and lenders in its relatively recent lifespan, and will continue its focus on the private sector, leaving government and nonprofit entities as potential future targets.
By combining Huron’s extensive experience in healthcare systems with strong data analytics, the new team seeks to provide a good fit when playing “matchmaker” between the right investors and operators looking to scale up and, with analysis that can benefit both.
