The future of Access Healthcare changed during a June 2024 cricket match. The setting couldn’t have been more fitting for Access Healthcare’s founder, Anurag Jain, a lifelong cricket fan and majority owner of Dallas’ local cricket team. Jain was watching his beloved India take on Pakistan and discussing the future of his company with the Managing Director and President of Private Equity at New Mountain Capital, Matt Holt. The conversation would prove influential.
Last week, New Mountain Capital completed a $6 billion deal to bring Jain’s revenue cycle management powerhouse Access Healthcare into a new entity called Smarter Technologies.
Smarter Technologies will be part of New Mountain’s $55 billion in assets under management and is a combination of Dallas-based Access Healthcare, New York-based clinical artificial intelligence provider SmarterDX, and Thoughtful.ai, an AI-powered Austin-based revenue cycle automation artificial intelligence platform. The new entity will be responsible for $800 million in revenue while serving 200 clients and 60 hospital systems. The company processes approximately 400 million transactions and generates $200 billion in revenue each year.
Jain founded Access Healthcare in 2011 and has grown it to become a national powerhouse in revenue cycle management nationwide while leading venture capital firm Perot Jain with Ross Perot Jr. and playing his role as majority owner of Dallas local Major League Cricket team, the Texas Super Kings. The deal means he will no longer be CEO of Access Healthcare. However, the controlled transaction means the entire company was not sold and will continue to maintain its clients under longtime Access executive Shaji Ravi.
Jain says the formation of Smarter Technologies is about addressing a growing problem in the healthcare industry: delayed payments and inefficiency. A survey from the American Hospital Association found that half of hospitals and health systems are owed more than $100 million in unpaid claims, much of which has been withheld for over six months. The combined power of Access’ revenue cycle management systems with artificial intelligence aims to make health systems more efficient and enable them to go toe-to-toe with payers who often have more advanced AI and technology.
“Payers tend to be larger and more aggregated, and the hospitals and the health systems tend to be much smaller in size. From that perspective, payers have been deploying more AI and are making it harder for a doctor to get paid, with more hoops to climb, more details to do, more data to fill, and a longer time before they get paid,” Jain says. “Our clients don’t have the same technology to fight an even battle, and that’s the gap that we want to fill.”
Smarter Technologies is led by Jeremy Delinsky, who is an executive advisor to New Mountain and an experienced healthcare and technology executive. “He’s a rock star who can bring all the technology, processes, and people together,” Jain says.
The goal is to provide a comprehensive platform that enables providers of all sizes to operate more efficiently, recover their full revenue, and effectively manage other back-office functions. Individual platforms will be built in a pragmatic way to meet the needs of each client of the client where they are. “Amid rapid change in the healthcare sector, Smarter Technologies offers a unique, comprehensive, and modular platform that addresses hospitals’ and health systems’ growing need for better administrative and revenue management technologies and capabilities,” Delinsky says.
What’s Next for Anurag Jain?
Jain has been tracking the development of AI in the revenue cycle management industry for years and asked himself whether Access was better off partnering with others who have more AI expertise to serve their clients or joining a new entity entirely. When New Mountain entered the picture, the decision became easier.
Though his Access Healthcare responsibilities will diminish (he will be on the board of Smarter Technologies), he has plenty of other projects to fill his schedule. He says he looks forward to spending more time on the robust deal flow at Perot Jain and working with entrepreneurs to grow their companies. “There’s no better time to build a company than right now,” he says. “It is so incredible to see the energy, work with entrepreneurs, and grow their companies.”
On the sporting front, the league has grown from one cricket-specific stadium to three this year, with locations in Dallas, Oakland, and Florida. On top of everything else, Jain says he is in the process of setting up his own family office and developing a platform to address back-office inefficiencies in the commercial real estate industry.
When he thinks back to the beginning of this deal and the conversation with Holt, Jain noted that India (where Jain is from) beat rivals Pakistan in a match played in New York while the largest domestic cricket audience watched on in person. The match was an auspicious beginning for the future of Access Healthcare, and Jain is excited about what the next chapter holds.
“It’s incredibly hard to get the vision and the right leadership right,” he says. “New Mountain has assembled an incredible war chest of talent. Technology matters, but talent matters most. To put all of these people under one roof? I’m excited to see what happens.”
Source: Access Healthcare
