Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
InTandem Capital Partners is launching Vivo Infusion, a new network of ambulatory infusion centers (AIC) created via the firm's simultaneous investments in MPP Infusion Centers and ID Consultants.
Why it matters: With patient demand for infusion and injection care expanding — and the supply of available therapies on this front also growing — more cost-effective, quality providers are needed, InTandem senior managing director Brad Coppens tells Axios.
- Estimates show that infusible therapies represent up to 60% of therapies in front of the FDA for approval, yet large payors are “struggling with the reality of ballooning pharmaceutical and infusible pharmaceutical costs,” Coppens says.
- Payors, therefore, are seeking out providers that offer a more affordable and convenient alternative to historical settings, which have included inpatient or outpatient hospital care and physician offices.
- This dynamic lends to what Coppens considers a rare, symbiotic relationship between payors and ambulatory and in-home infusion providers.
Ambulatory settings offer similar cost advantages as in-home providers (since most are pharmaceutical costs) but the labor efficiencies are notably better.
- The clinical staff at centers can care for patients on a “one to many basis” versus “one to one” in the home, Coppens notes.
Details: Denver-based Vivo is generating around $200 million of revenue today, and by clinic-count, its newly combined 24-location network puts it among the top five AIC platforms today.
- Vivo provides infusible care to adult patients with multiple long-duration chronic illnesses, such rheumatoid arthritis.
- The combined company over the last two years witnessed a 30%-plus annualized growth rate, all the while the broader subsegment is growing at about 20% annually.
- Edgemont Partners advised MPP and IDC on the transaction.
What's next: Not unlike the original vision for Cano Health, which went public in 2021 via a $4.4 billion SPAC deal, InTandem’s goal is to create a national leader in ambulatory infusion therapy.
- Vivo will build density around some of its current markets, which span Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, via de novo growth and consolidation, Vivo Infusion CEO Chris Reef says.
- Health equity can also be tackled, as payors can help Vivo identify markets that desperately need providers.
- Combining the in-network contracting and marketing and sales strengths of IDC and MPP, respectively, Vivo is positioned to partner with commercial and Medicare Advantage payors “where there really aren’t opportunities today,” Reef says.
- Many infusible therapies are currently only available in hospitals have the potential to be administered in the ambulatory setting, and Vivo can "pioneer" those new opportunities, he explains.
The bottom line: The infusion therapy landscape is transforming as both payors and providers call for a shift in site-of-care, and that lends to a large and compelling opportunity for investors to support the burgeoning sub-segment.
- "In as little as three years, over 50% of infusion authorizations from payor initiated site-of-care reviews will be directed to the AIC segment," Coppens says.
Editor's note: The final quote from Mr. Coppens has been clarified to correct an overstatement of growth. The growth will be 50% of infusion authorizations directed to AICs, not 50% of all infusion treatments.