Acentus to providers: 'Join the club'

TAMPA, Fla. - With his new company Acentus, provider Todd Cianfrocca is borrowing a page from private equity companies, except without the debt.

The HME platform allows select independent HME and medical supply companies to come together under a holding company, leveraging their combined purchase volume to improve gross profit margins and grow revenue rapidly through a larger payer portfolio.

“We want to smartly scale out the business without debt and we are hoping to entertain other like-minded business owners who want to join the club, so to speak,” said Cianfrocca, CEO of Acentus.

Acentus formed in April when Tampa-Fla.-based Ally Medical merged with McKinney, Texas-based Preston Wound Care.

While the product portfolios of the two companies might seem different—Ally focuses on incontinence supplies and medical nutrition for special needs children and adult urologicals, while Preston is a large provider of wound care products—there is synergy on the payer side, said Cianfrocca.

“The wound care and adult urology payer mix is very similar, so it's nice for us to complement each other,” he said. “It made sense for us to join forces and establish this platform to leverage the payer portfolios we both have.”

That combined payer portfolio includes commercial and managed care contracts, Medicare and Medicaid. Acentus currently holds Medicaid licenses in 24 states.

In addition to acquisitions, Acentus will look to grow its footprint organically—it recently opened an office in North Carolina. It has also established an operational “super center” in Tampa to efficiently handle billing, documentation, human resources and other back-office functions, while other branches will be focused on generating revenue, says Cianfrocca.

“We know how to generate referrals,” he said. “We'd put our sales team up against anybody's.”

The other key piece to success: company culture, says Cianfrocca.

“One thing I've learned is it's the people you hire,” he said. “Someone would come to me, and say,  'I can bring you  $2 million in revenue if you hire me.' That's great but the do you fit into our company culture? There have been times I've delivered an enteral pump for a child to a family and sat in my car afterward and bawled like a baby. If you can't feel that, then you don't belong at Acentus.”