Radiology provider Envision Healthcare has successfully exited from the bankruptcy process, the company announced on Friday.
The Nashville, Tennessee-based multispecialty group first filed for Chapter 11 in May, seeking to retool its troubled capital structure. Five months later, the restructuring process is now complete, with Envision reducing its debts by more than 70%.
Under terms of the agreement, Envision’s ambulatory surgery center chain, AmSurg, is spinning off as a separate company with its own distinct leadership team. Both have new equity owners and an optimistic outlook.
“Now that our financial restructuring has been completed successfully, we are driving Envision’s future growth from a position of stability and strength,” CEO Jim Rechtin, MBA, said in a Nov. 3 announcement. “We have significantly less debt as well as a strong operating model that will fuel the success of our patients and partners, achieve our strategic objectives, and accelerate our growth.”
Envision previously said on Oct. 11 that it planned to exit bankruptcy in the coming weeks. The restructuring follows years of turmoil, including drops in patient volumes amid the COVID-19 pandemic, payment disputes with health insurers, clinician shortages and rising inflation. This will mark the largest loss ever for Envision’s former private equity backers at KKR, which invested nearly $10 billion (including debt) as part of a highly leveraged buyout completed in 2018.
Prior to the proceeding, Envision employed more than 17,000 clinicians, primarily in emergency and hospitalist medicine, anesthesiology and neonatology. Another 500 of its physicians practice in radiology, completing roughly 8 million reads last year.
CEO Jim Rechtin also recently announced that he is leaving Envision next year to take over the top post at health insurer Humana.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.