KPMG buys healthcare consultancy Beacon Partners
Global accounting and consulting firm KPMG has acquired Beacon Partners, a US-based healthcare consulting firm. With the move, the Big Four firm significantly boosts its North American health advisory practice, adding more than $60 million in revenues to its Advisory business.
Beacon Partners was founded 26 years ago, and has since grown to one of the larger and most recognised healthcare advisory firms in the US, ranked 15th on Modern Healthcare’s list of top healthcare consulting firms. The firm operates with four offices across North America (Weymouth, Seville, Danville and Ontario) and has a revenue of over $60 million. Beacon Partners offers clients advisory services, as well as tech support for core provider business applications and Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems. The company works for among others hospital systems, academic medical centers, integrated delivery networks, and physician groups.
With over 160,000 professionals in more than 150 countries, KPMG is one of the largest professional services providers of the globe. Its US entity, KPMG US, has in recent months been on an acquisition spree, aimed at growing its market position vis a vis the competition. In the last seventeen months the Big Four has made eight acquisitions, each focused on adding depth to its offerings in key sectors including healthcare, financial services, industrial manufacturing and technology. The purchase of Beacon Partners, its ninth, is a move that bolsters its healthcare offering, at the moment one of the most attractive segments in the consulting industry, says John Veihmeyer, Global Chairman of KPMG.
“Healthcare is among our firm’s strongest and most promising marketplace opportunities. As the healthcare industry experiences unprecedented transformation – with increased regulations, technological disruption, and wide scale adoption of new business and operating models driving demand for our services – this acquisition will strengthen KPMG’s market position in this industry.”
The transaction broadens KPMG’s end-to-end healthcare consultancy offering, adding “critical skills” to its Operations Improvement team says the firm, supplementing the existing revenue cycle, performance improvement, clinical process improvement, business planning, ACO development, and analytics capabilities. The deal in addition strengthens KPMG’s Health IT proposition, building on the expertise of Zanett Commercial Solutions and Cynergy Systems, previous pickups that added IT expertise to the firm.
“This acquisition significantly enhances the end-to-end transformation platform that we are diligently building within the Healthcare IT market. Additionally, we expect the resulting platform to drive additional strategic and pull-through opportunities for our performance improvement, compliance, cyber and data and analytics capabilities”, comments Liam Walsh, U.S. Advisory Industry Leader, Healthcare & Life Sciences.
Ralph Fargnoli, President and CEO of Beacon Partners, adds: “The integration of Beacon Partners and KPMG will provide our clients an even deeper level of service and expertise that will become increasingly important to healthcare providers as they plan and implement their strategies for success over the next few years.”
