Welsh Carson, USPI and Tenet Create Largest Ambulatory Surgery Platform in the United States

Ropes & Gray advised Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe and United Surgical Partners International (USPI) in a joint venture that closed on June 16 with Tenet Healthcare Corporation, under which Tenet and USPI will combine their short-stay surgery and imaging center assets. The Tenet and USPI joint venture will be the largest provider of ambulatory surgery in the United States.

The joint venture will have ownership interests in 249 ambulatory surgery centers, 18 short-stay surgical hospitals and 20 imaging centers in 29 states. It will maintain the USPI brand, as well as USPI’s three-way partnership model with physicians and not-for-profit health systems. The combined operations will have partnerships with 50 health systems and more than 4,000 physicians at the facility level.

Separately, the London office of Ropes & Gray also advised Welsh Carson in its sale on June 16 of the operations of Aspen Healthcare Ltd. to Tenet. Aspen, which operates nine private hospitals and clinics in the United Kingdom, began as a two-hospital system that was acquired by USPI in April 2000 with backing from Welsh Carson. Aspen USPI grew the system before a restructuring of the USPI group in 2012, which resulted in it becoming an independent company majority owned by Welsh Carson.

The cross-office Ropes & Gray team was led by private equity partners Othon Prounis (New York), Carl Marcellino (New York); tax partner Leo Arnaboldi (New York); business & securities litigation partner William Sussman (New York); antitrust partner Jonathan Klarfeld (Washington, D.C.); benefits partner Jonathan Zorn (Boston); and tax counsel Andrew Howard (London).