Becker's ASC Review

24 GASTROENTEROLOGY 5 gastroenterology supergroups to know By Riz Hatton Here are five gastroenterology supergroups to know: Gastro Health: Gastro Health has more than 375 physicians and 218 locations. It is led by CEO Joseph Garcia and backed by private equity firm Omers. GI Alliance: GI Alliance supports 786 physicians and has more than 527 locations. The group is led by CEO James Weber, MD, and is backed by private equity firm Apollo Hybrid Value Strategy. One GI: One GI supports 195 physicians and 65 locations. It is led by CEO Christa Newton and backed by private equity firm Webster Equity Partners. United Digestive: United Digestive has 126 physicians and 79 locations. The group is led by CEO Mark Gilreath and is backed by private equity firm Kohlberg & Company. U.S. Digestive Health: U.S. Digestive Health has 140 gastroenterologists and 45 locations. The group is led by CEO Jerry Tillinger and was formed by private equity firm Amulet Capital Partners. n Recommended colonoscopies at 40? What will disrupt the GI industry next By Patsy Newitt U .S. Digestive Health CEO Jerry Tillinger recently joined Becker's to discuss what he thinks will disrupt the gastroenterology industry next. Editor's note: This response was edited lightly for length and clarity. Question: What will disrupt the GI industry next? Jerry Tillinger: It's a rapidly moving industry — there's technology changes, there's medicine changes and there's a ton of things that are hitting us all the time. But the one that I think is actually going to drive the most change for us is the rapid growth and the demand for outpatient procedures as we've moved the bar for colonoscopy screening from 50 to 45. And honestly, I don't think we're that far from moving it down to 40. In the conversations we have around the market, the public is very interested in not dying of colon cancer. And every time you have an announcement of someone they've heard of who dies of colon cancer because they weren't diagnosed till they were 38 and they were already at stage 4, they start to wonder why they're waiting till they're 45 or 50. So as I find more and more patients have gone and gotten screened early, I think we're gonna continue to see this demand for screening access. And I don't think the liquid biopsy of stool testing is good enough yet, so I think that we're still gonna see what we're seeing is the demand for us to provide outpatient procedures at our endoscopy centers is driving faster than I can recruit and build. We're on a massive recruiting cycle, and we're on a massive building cycle to get more rooms available. I think the corollary to that will be more and more pressure on the hospitals. And as we have that demand coming, we're doing less and less time in the hospital for the physicians because frankly the quality of life level is a big deal for the physicians. We get the young graduates coming out frequently saying that if they have to be in the hospital more than a certain amount, they won't take the job. So I think we're gonna continue to see the number of hospitals that offer GI coverage going down, and the ones that do will continue to get busier. We're seeing this weird rebalancing of service happening in the market, certainly in the Pennsylvania and Delaware markets. We see that now that the opportunity cost for the practice to take somebody out of the endoscopy center and put them at the hospital is pretty significant. And when we're competing for talented physicians with health systems that are willing to throw big salaries around, we have to obviously focus on making sure we can keep up in the race. So it's creating this pressure that I think you're gonna see the practices doing more and more outpatient work and you're gonna see the hospital struggling to get coverage for GI at the macro level. n "When we're competing for talented physicians with health systems that are willing to throw big salaries around, we have to obviously focus on making sure we can keep up in the race." — Jerry Tillinger, CEO of U.S. Digestive Health

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