NEW TR Ultra Growth Stock Pick!
August 7, 2020
Healthcare Merger Corp (HCCO) SOC Telemed Merger
(Units: HCCOU / Common Stock: HCCO/ Warrants: HCCOW)
Actions to Take:
1) Buy HCCO warrants (HCCOW) under $2.50 with late 2020 $8 target.
2) BUY HCCO shares under $12.50 with 2022 $28 target
Summary: Sometimes in the life of an investor or a business, you find yourself at the exact right place at the exact right time. In the case of SOC Telemed’s merger with Healthcare Merger Corp. (HCCO), this in our opinion is definitely one of those rare times for self-directed investors where ALL the transformational growth boxes are checked!
Consider this base case for investing in telemedicine pioneer SOC Telemed. In the space of just the last 60 days:
The demand and adoption rates of their acute telemedicine services (“virtual health care”) was accelerated 5 years with the Covid-19 pandemic
Telehealth is here to stay. On August 4, telehealth deregulation was accelerated by 5 years via an Executive Order from the White House converted temporary telehealth deregulation into permanent law
On August 5th, the first major acquisition/merger in the telemedicine/virtual health care industry was announced at the astronomical valuation of B2B2C tele-chronic care provider Livongo (LVGO) at 37X estimated 2020 estimated revenues.
In short, in just 90 days a new transformative paradigm for massive telehealth/virtualized health care services expansion has come to the American health system. And boy does America need transformation. The CMS estimates 2019 spend on US health care @$3.91 trillion vs. $3.6 trillion in 2018 up 4%. That’s $11,172 per person in health care spend. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, US health spending accounted for 17.7 percent and is rising >50% faster than our 2.3% rate of GDP growth.
More surreal is while ~50% of America’s 2019 $3.9 trillion annual healthcare bill was spent on just 5% of ALL patients just 1% of patients consumed 27% of our entire $3.9 trillion bill.
The vast majority of the $11,172 spent per person on healthcare (the highest in the world per capita by 3x-9x versus modern OECD countries) was spent by Medicare and private insurance while the U.S. ranked 32 in health quality out of 35 countries or basically dead last in healthcare service outcomes at a 3x-9X higher cost.
Spending nearly 20% of a country’s ENTIRE GDP on healthcare is not sustainable anywhere. We can’t just “bend the cost curve”—we have to break it.
On the bright side, it is now without question that the explosion of telehealth and virtual health care has been one of the most constructive advances to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. The gains for the patient include convenience (in-home), affordability, and rapid access to quality care while eliminating the risk of viral spread. For the people eventually paying the telehealth bill, every telehealth visit vs. in-office or false emergency room bill added together saves $billions.
Every member of our Transformity Research Experts Alliance with subject matter expertise is American healthcare management we contacted on this issue stated “The virtual health care genie is out of the bottle and it’s never going back in.”
SOC Telemed is the premier B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer/patient) acute care telemedicine company in America.
We submit that this virtual healthcare pioneer, founded in 2004, is one of the prime beneficiaries of the unprecedented 5 years acceleration of virtual health care adoption in 90 days as it sits square in the middle of this once-a-generation transformation.
With the HCCO and cash flow positive SOC Telemed merger, we get:
1) A transformative 5-year 40%+ greenfield annual growth expansion runway
2) SOC Telemed at a ~$720M valuation
3) A growth-at-a-reasonable price-to-sales ratio of just @ 9.3 x 2021 revenues in a
4) Participation in an ultra-hot stock market sector with LVGO up 465.5% in five months which has literally been one of the greatest runs in the history of the stock market
5) With an industry comp Teledoc (TDOC), a pioneering telehealth provider also up 250%+ in 2020, merging with Livongo (LVGO) at $18 billion valuation or @ 52x trailing sales.
6) LVGO guidance for 2020 is $300 million ergo deal is LVGO at 37x EV/2020 forward sales.
Key point: All of this makes HCCO, sponsored by highly experienced and successful healthcare private equity pros, perhaps the bargain SPAC of 2020 season. Even more exciting? When the “deSPACing” merger closes in late December, HCCO embarks on a rapid growth consolidation phase growing from 3 acute specialist telehealth verticals to 10+ over the next 36-48 months.
In short, HCCO checks ALL the boxes we look for in a highly successful market welcome SPAC transaction:
1) A long term hyper-growth greenfield space
2) Recent hyper-successful stock comparables (LVOC/TDOC) at much higher revenue multiples
3) A market valuation with 500% long term upside potential
4) World-class industry leadership and experience
5) Major institutional investors and Wall Street sponsorship
6) An on-brand millennial service/product (for the Robinhood traders)
Key SOC Telemed Metrics
2021 Estimated Revenue $80.4M or 9.3x EV/2021 Sales, y/y growth
2022 Revenue $113.5M, 41% y/y growth
2023 Revenues est. $190 million ( 55% organic/45% acquisitions)
HCCO/SOC will have higher top-line growth in 2021 & 2022 than LVGO, yet LVGO was just sold to Teledoc at a 52X EV/2021 PREMIUM to SOC Telemed valuation
Valuation Estimates: Current Private Specialty Healthcare Tech/Service PE Valuations are 12-16 times forward 12-month revenues
HCCO Public Multiple: 14X forward 2021 (premium valuation reflects public liquidity and aggressive new vertical acquisitions with cash):
2021 Target: $20-$22 per share fully diluted
HCCO 2022 Target (3 material specialty telehealth acquisitions on ~$190M 2023 revenues): $28-$30
SOC Telemed Background
Since 2004, SOC Telemed has grown to become the largest provider of acute tele-neurology, tele-psychiatry, tele-acute care in North America. SOC has delivered over one million acute care consultations to 847 facilities including 543 acute care hospitals with customers such as HCA Healthcare, Community Health Systems and Baylor Scott & White.
These major hospital operators use SOC for one basic reason: they do not have enough specialty care physicians available in their small city/rural areas to run their hospitals effectively and safely.
Enter SOC. They employ over 200 physician specialists. SOC’s proprietary cloud-based acute telehealth SaaS software platform is also embedded within 19 of the 25 largest U.S. health systems.
Most important to HCCO investors, SOC Management has identified 7 additional acute virtual care verticals to significantly expand SOC’s footprint and market penetration beyond neurology, psychiatry and critical care. “There’s an abundance of growth opportunity available,” CEO Paul Ricci said in a recent interview.
Says Ricci, “The Company has identified seven other areas ‘that we think are most primed for acute-care telemedicine, into which it plans expansion, Ricci said. Those areas are 1) cardiology, 2) infectious disease, 3) hospital centric medicine, 4) emergency medicine, 5) maternal-fetal medicine, 6) palliative care and 7) oncology.
Key Point: There are literally 100’s of small (and not so small) telehealth companies that SOC Telemed will be able to target for a strategic rollup play with their high value equity to use as currency in this highly fragmented industry.
Investment Thesis: A New Paradigm in Acute & Chronic Telehealth Care is Here & SOC Is Perfectly Positioned to Ride That Transformative Growth Wave to a $3B+ Valuation & Eventual Acquisition by a Top 5 Mega Cap Health Plan Operator
Healthcare in the United States is an >$3.9 trillion spend growing 2X faster than our GDP in our $20 trillion economy. It literally grows every day another Boomer turns 65 years old (10,000+ per day for the next 10 years.)
The August 2020 LVGO/Teledoc transaction and COVID-19 pandemic is the poster child for this sea change/paradigm shift in both patient and health insurer attitudes toward virtual health and individualized telecare that will, without question, outlast the pandemic according to every expert we have consulted with on this deal.
According to one industry insider in our TR Experts Alliance, the “dirty little secret in telehealth is until March, telehealth was 1-2% of patient visits. Today those visits are virtual 55-60% especially in Medicare plans where providers are now compensated for telehealth services in 20-minute fee-for-service segments. Given that SOC Telemed is a subscription-based service, traditional fee-for-service providers can’t compete against SOC’s lower unit priced plans (especially in the Southeast United States which is the last hold out for fee-for-service Medicare billing in America).
The other dirty little secrets in American healthcare is a) Medical doctors are retiring at a record pace in America (“I’m done—I can’t take it anymore”) b) America is not graduating enough new medical doctors (or importing them from other countries via HB-1 visas) to replace the retiring ones c) Becoming a salaried “teledoc” acute care specialist is, for many specialists, a great way to improve their life/work balance, get a weekly salary with benefits/vacation/sick days and most important have D) NO private practice office/insurance private practice billing trauma.
The traditional “fee-for-service” private practice/hospital billing model where Medicare is billed for every minute of time of every office visit and procedure to a general practitioner or specialist has been dying for 10 years with the adoption of the ACA Act and ACO’s (Accountable Care Organizations). One of the main ways the Affordable Care Act seeks to reduce health care costs is by encouraging doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to form networks that coordinate patient care and become eligible for bonuses when they deliver that care more efficiently. The law takes a carrot-and-stick approach by exclusively contracting (when possible) with ACO’s in the Medicare program.
Simply put; providers and hospitals make more if they keep their patients healthy and keep them OUT of the emergency room or hospital bed. The convenience and immediacy of telehealth intervention and triage are critical to achieving lower ER and hospital days.
In addition, the majority of Medicare beneficiaries today opt for private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans run by mega national group health insurance companies like United Healthcare, Humana, Aetna, Centene, and others. These plan sponsors exclusively contract with and support these ACO doctors and hospitals who again are incentivized financially for achieving above standard healthcare outcomes. Initially, ACO’s assume very little risk but CMS pushes them to take more upside and downside risk by paying bonuses for better outcomes for chronically ill folks. They are not billing CMS directly like a fee-for-service/FFS doctor does; they are billing the MA company or receive a fixed monthly $ amount per member per month to provide care. The MA plan incentivizes the ACO to perform care coordination and population health management as a fundamental process to reduce hospital days and stays.
By far the most efficient ACO in the United States is Kaiser Permanente. Their model of salaried primary and specialist doctors in owned and operated hospitals (in their largest market California) and extensive use of telehealthcare technology is second to none for large healthcare providers. The “Kaiser Model” is the standard of care for integrated in-office/virtual health care.
What drives the “Kaiser Model” to the lowest cost/best outcomes BY FAR in the American healthcare complex? More than 50% of Kaiser Permanente’s patient visits are done virtually and that data is from 2015!
How could that be? Pretty simple, really. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (32 in California) and its exclusive Permanente Medical Groups (36,000 MD’s) have never worked on a fee-for-service basis. Every $dollar Kaiser Permanente Health Plans receives from employers, states (Medicaid), or the federal government (Medicare) is allocated across their truly integrated health care system to emphasize care coordination by providing care at the right place at the right time, no more no less.
They have even started their own medical school to keep up with their growth and replace the MD’s they lose to retirement. They call this corporate culture differentiator “Permanente Medicine” and they are the gold standard for what is now being referred to as “value-based healthcare” and “population health management” outside its walls. As Wayne Gretzky would say this is where the US healthcare “puck" is going long term.
Do you know what Kaiser doesn’t have? The ~$750 billion annual scourge of a) healthcare fraud and b) the remaining old school fee-for-service US healthcare system.
Key point: Virtual care just makes too much sense and allows healthcare providers to focus on the 5% of Americans that drive 50% of the $3.9 Trillion we spend in the US healthcare industrial complex.
Strategically: SOC Telemed virtualized acute care healthcare services are the ONLY way for non-urban public and private ACO’s to replicate the Kaiser model in their regional healthcare ACO’s.
ACA also created the Medicare Shared Savings Program. In it, ACOs make providers jointly accountable for the health of their patients, giving them financial incentives to cooperate and save money by avoiding unnecessary tests and procedures. For ACOs to work, they have to seamlessly share information. Those that save money while also meeting quality targets keep a portion of the savings. Providers can choose to be at risk of losing money if they want to aim for a bigger reward, or they can enter the program with no risk at all. In addition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) created a second strategy, called the Pioneer Program, for high-performing health systems to pocket more of the expected savings in exchange for taking on greater financial risk.
Key Point: Very few small market SOC hospitals could compete for these financial rewards without SOC Telemed “beaming in” the specialists they require to care for their patients. And whatever hesitations they had for this mode of care before Covid-19 are gone by now—they have seen the cold cruel harsh light of healthcare 2020.
The Medicare Telehealth Big Bang August 4th 2020
Telehealth use has skyrocketed during the pandemic. In April, over 43% of all Medicare primary care visits were done by telehealth compared to less than .1% in February. An estimated 10.1 million Medicare beneficiaries have accessed telehealth, including 3.6 million seniors.
In addition to all the above, this SOC merger is incredibly timely as it comes just a day after President Trump signed an executive order to greatly expand and deregulate telehealth services to Americans living in rural areas and expands telehealth to traditional (non-Medicare Advantage) Medicare’s 44 million beneficiaries—some 15 percent of the U.S. population.
Enrollment in Medicare is expected to rise to 79 million by 2030 as 10,000 Boomers turn 65 every day till 2030. The Biden campaign also has a plan to expand grant funding for the USDA Community Facility Direct Loan & Grant Program, with a focus on ‘accelerating the deployment of telehealth for mental health and specialty care.’
As customary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), this cost lowering/care improving initiative in Medicare will also soon be extended to Medicaid, the state-sponsored healthcare plans 70% funded by the Federal Government.
According to estimates of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), over 78 million people were enrolled in Medicaid in 2020 including 40 million children. In California, 1 in 3 citizens (13 million +) is enrolled in Medi-Cal, its version of Medicaid, 90% of whom are in a managed Medicaid plan.
To quote the White House’s Executive Order on Monday, August 3 about vastly expanding telehealth services and reimbursement in Medicare/Medicaid:
“During the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), hospitals curtailed elective medical procedures and access to in-person clinical care was limited. To help patients achieve better access to healthcare providers, my Administration implemented new flexibility regarding what services may be provided via telehealth, who may provide them, and in what circumstances, and the use of telehealth increased dramatically across the Nation. An internal analysis by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) showed a weekly jump in virtual visits for CMS beneficiaries, from approximately 14,000 pre-PHE to almost 1.7 million in the last week of April.
Additionally, a recent report by HHS shows that nearly half (43.5 percent) of Medicare fee-for-service primary care visits were provided through telehealth in April, compared with far less than one percent (0.1 percent) in February before the PHE. Importantly, the report finds that telehealth visits continued to be frequent even after in-person primary care visits resumed in May, indicating that the expansion of telehealth services is likely to be a more permanent feature of the healthcare delivery system.
Rural healthcare providers, in particular, need these types of flexibilities to provide continuous care to patients in their communities. It is the purpose of this order to increase access to, improve the quality of, and improve the financial economics of rural healthcare, including by increasing access to high-quality care through telehealth.
Sec. 2. Launching an Innovative Payment Model to Enable Rural Healthcare Transformation. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of HHS (Secretary) will announce a new model, pursuant to section 1115A of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1315a), to test innovative payment mechanisms in order to ensure that rural healthcare providers are able to provide the necessary level and quality of care. This model should give rural providers flexibilities from existing Medicare rules, establish predictable financial payments, and encourage the movement into high-quality, value-based care.
Sec. 3. Investments in Physical and Communications Infrastructure. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary and the Secretary of Agriculture shall, consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations, and in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission and other executive departments and agencies, as appropriate, develop and implement a strategy to improve rural health by improving the physical and communications healthcare infrastructure available to rural Americans.
Sec. 4. Improving the Health of Rural Americans. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, regarding existing and upcoming policy initiatives to:
(a) increase rural access to healthcare by eliminating regulatory burdens that limit the availability of clinical professionals;
(b) prevent disease and mortality by developing rural specific efforts to drive improved health outcomes;
(c) reduce maternal mortality and morbidity; and
(d) improve mental health in rural communities.”
SOC Telemed finds itself, after 16 years of development, positioned right in the middle of acute telehealth adoption sweet spot because SOC Telemed cuts costs for the public healthcare system and “virtualizes” specialist medical care to make it available at rural hospitals and medical groups with severe professional services shortages.
SOC was the first provider of acute clinical telemedicine services to earn The Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval and has maintained that accreditation every year since inception.
Final Point: Is SOC Telemed the next LVGO?
It’s not a very good analogy. They are both a subscription and software-based solution. But LVGO contracts primarily with self-funded corporate health benefit plans (managed by outside plan managers like Aetna) and health plans for disease management to lower the cost of the most expensive chronic care diseases—today primarily diabetes.
Virtualizing physicians solves a significant problem where there is a labor shortage of certain physician specialties amid the secular trend in healthcare of lowering specialty physician costs and improving outcomes. A June 2020 survey found that 90% of hospitals and health systems expect to their increase spend on clinician-to-clinician acute care telehealth in the next 12 to 18 months (EY-Parthenon), and TDOC has cited favorable reimbursement tailwinds for hospitals and health systems to fully realize the value of virtual care.
SOC Telemed’s has a singular focus on B2B clinician-to-clinician telemedicine, a strategic focus on physician specialties with labor shortages, and is expanding into a least 10 different medical specialties to “virtualize” and inject them into the most understaffed and overworked hospitals in America.
Business Model and Competition
Source: Company website
The revenue model for SOC Telemed is basically a subscription model for both their acute care practitioners and (soon) software platform. The company reports 60% of relationships last over four years which reflects the hospital clients' lack of alternative choices and SOC’s first-mover status/advantage. The company reports revenue retention exceeds 100% which reflects additional incremental services added to the initial acute telecare contract—that is a very SaaS type business model (which gets MUCH higher revenue multiples than non-digital “atoms” based businesses with high CapEx and capital costs).
The current TAM (“total addressed market) of current physician specialties is estimated to be $3.2B, and an incremental $11-$13B addressable in the 7 new areas management intends to add a quickly as possible
The company reports their main sources of competition for the company are smaller regional competitors and InTouch Health (a subsidiary of Teledoc acquired recently) and Avizia (owned by privately held Amwell) on both the virtualized healthcare and software side.
Key point: With the addition of $100+ million in fresh capital, public company reporting standards, and additional economies of scale together with an expanded line-up of acute care verticals, our team research says there is plenty of room for all three national players to grow at 40-60% rates.
Final Pont: If you understand the how the managed American healthcare system operates at mass scale, eventually it is an almost certainty that the publicly traded healthcare giants (most likely Centene, Aetna or United Healthcare) will consolidate both SOC Telemed and Amwell to take virtual healthcare space to the next level as Teledoc did with
The reason is that under any Federal administration, Medicare Advantage is going to double in size by 2030, and Managed Medicaid plans (Centene/Molina) will gain much more market share as State revenues are constricted for many years as the America economy slowly returns to its ‘new normal.”
To slow America’s 3-8X most expensive (per capita) healthcare system in the world, we literally have no choice but to continue to finish the transformation of this nearly $4 trillion monster to e-healthcare platforms integrated with telehealthcare/virtualized acute care to put the final stake in remaining perversely incentivized (the more you do, the more you get paid) fee-for-service (FFS) medical groups and sole practitioners left standing.
Fact: America (from a Federal spending perspective) is already a defacto health and retirement benefits insurance company with its own standing military. With the advanced integrated care approach driven by technology, the American Hunger Games-style health care system cannot survive; there is just not enough taxes Americans willing pay to pay 50-60% marginal tax rates to cover the ever-growing bill.
Virtual healthcare was fought because there was no reimbursement for doctors or nurse practitioners. ACO’s and capitated managed care was fought before that. Those industry wars are over—and the person who pays the bills won. With the COVID-19 wake-up call, virtualized acute, chronic, and basic checkups/coughs and sniffles will soon be diagnosed, pharmaceuticals ordered and delivered via highly integrated e-healthcare systems with AI diagnostics and management.
Virtualized healthcare is just the next step.
HCCO Management Background:
Steve Shulman (CEO)
Mr. Shulman has over 45 years of experience leading and acquiring businesses in the healthcare industry. Mr Shulman is currently the Chairman of Magellan where he previously served as Chief Executive Officer from 2002 to 2008 and spearheaded its turnaround and restructuring following bankruptcy. Magellan is now a leader in managing what we believe are among the fastest-growing, most complex areas of health, including special populations and other specific areas of healthcare. Mr. Shulman also currently serves as Chairman of Quartet Health, Inc., a healthcare technology company which connects primary care and mental health providers, a position he has held since 2014, CareCentrix, Inc., a post-acute managed care company, a position he has held since 2008 and Co-Chairman of Healthmap Solutions Inc., a health management company focused on progressive diseases, since 2018. He is also the Managing Partner at Shulman Family Ventures, Inc., a healthcare-focused private equity firm, a position he has held since 2008. In the last five years, he has served as a Director of several other privately- held companies, including VillageMD, a primary care medical management company, MedImpact, the largest privately held prescription drug benefits management company, Healthmarkets, healthcare distribution, and specialty insurance company, Pager, a digital health company and Facet Technologies, an OEM of lancets and lancing devices for diabetics. Previously, from 2013 to 2018, Mr. Shulman served as Chairman of the Board of R1 RCM Inc., a technology-enabled revenue cycle management service for healthcare providers and from 2013 to 2014 as Chairman of Health Management Associates, Inc., an independent national research and consulting firm in the healthcare industry. He served as an Operating Partner at Water Street Healthcare Partners, LLC from 2008 until 2015 and Tower Three Partners LLC from 2008 until 2013. He also served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Internet Healthcare Group, LLC from 2000 to 2002 and as Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Prudential Healthcare, Inc. from 1997 to 1999. Prior to that, Mr. Shulman served in senior executive positions at Value Health, Inc., a specialty managed care company he founded and took public, including as a Director and as President of the Pharmacy and Disease Management Group. He also previously held senior executive positions at each of Cigna Corporation, including as President of the East Central Division, and Kaiser Permanente, an integrated managed-care company, including as Director, Medical Economics. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Master’s degree in Health Services Administration from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Charles J. Ditkoff (President)
Mr. Ditkoff currently serves as Senior Advisor to MTS Health Partners, L.P. where he advises healthcare clients on all aspects of major corporate transactions, including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and going-private transactions as well as regulatory, reimbursement and operational issues. Mr. Ditkoff is also a Senior Advisor at FTI Consulting, Inc., where he drives relationships with healthcare organizations and private equity firms, as well as a Senior Advisor to Ares Management Corporation, a global alternative asset manager and also serves as Senior Advisor at The Marwood Group, a healthcare-focused advisory and consulting firm. He also currently serves as counsel at McDermott, Will & Emery. In addition, Mr. Ditkoff is a director of Cumberland Consulting Group, LLC, a healthcare consulting and services firm providing strategic advisory consulting services, IT professional service outsourced managed services and analytics solutions to clients in the payer, provider and life sciences markets. Previously, Mr. Ditkoff was Vice Chairman and Head of Global Healthcare Corporate and Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Mr. Ditkoff was among the most recognized bankers covering healthcare on Wall Street and under his direction Bank of America Merrill Lynch gained a leading market position in the healthcare sector in mergers and acquisitions as well as private and public financings of debt and equity. Previously, he worked at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. Prior to that, he was an Associate at Cravath, Swaine and Moore where he practiced corporate securities law.
Rick Matros (Director)
Rick Matros has served as Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sabra Healthcare REIT, Inc. (NASDAQ: SBRA) since 2010. He was Chairman of the board of directors and Chief Executive Officer of Sun Healthcare Group, Inc. from 2001 until the transaction which created Sabra. Mr. Matros founded and served as Chief Executive Officer and President of Bright Now! Dental, a dental care provider, from 1998 to 2000 and as a director from 1998 until its sale in 2010. From 1998 until the sale of its operations in 2006, Mr. Matros was also a member of CareMeridian, LLC, a healthcare company that specialized in offering subacute and skilled nursing for patients suffering from traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and other catastrophic injuries, where he also served on the management committee. Previously, from 1994 to 1997, he served Regency Health Services, Inc., a publicly held long-term care operator, holding positions as Chief Executive Officer, President, director and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to that time, from 1988 to 1994, he served at Care Enterprises, Inc., holding positions as Chief Executive Officer, President, Chief Operating Officer, director and Executive Vice President—Operations. Mr. Matros has served on the executive board for RFE Investment Partners since 2009 and as the Executive Producer of Sabra Films, LLC since 2012. Mr. Matros holds a B.A. degree from Alfred University, and a M.S. in Gerontology from the University of Southern California. He is well-qualified to serve as a director due to his extensive operational and investment experience in the healthcare industry.
SOC Telemed Management Background:
Paul Ricci (Interim CEO and Incoming Chairman)
Paul Ricci was the chairman and CEO of Nuance Communications until he retired in March 2018. While at Nuance, Ricci transformed the company from a small imaging software publisher into a $2B leading provider of conversational speech and AI solutions, with 14,000 employees worldwide.
John Kalix (President and Incoming CEO)
John comes to SOC with more than 25 years of experience in healthcare. He most recently served as EVP and Chief Operating Officer at North American Partners of Anesthesia (NAPA). While there, John led all clinical and operational elements of the business, helping grow NAPA from a small regional physician practice management company to the nation’s largest hospital and ASC anesthesia and pain management business with more than 5,000 employed clinicians. Prior to NAPA, John spent 7 years at GE Healthcare leading U.S. and Canada commercial operations across all medical equipment, healthcare IT, and solution service business units. He went on to lead GE’s MRI and PET/MR business for the U.S. and Canada as well as GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences pharmaceutical and nuclear medicine divisions for North America.