Under the terms of the agreement, McKesson will pay $28.00 per share in cash. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2007, subject to customary conditions, including regulatory review.
McKesson says the inclusion of Per-Se will strengthen customer relationships in existing McKesson businesses serving hospitals, physicians and pharmacies. In addition, Per-Se will add the nation’s largest electronic pharmacy network connecting approximately 90% of US retail pharmacies to other business partners to help manage key clinical, financial and administrative transactions for the pharmacist and payor.
Per-Se’s current customer base includes approximately 100,000 physicians in small practices, 17,000 hospital-affiliated physicians, 3,000 hospitals and 50,000 retail pharmacies.
Both McKesson and Per-Se share a vision to reduce healthcare costs while improving quality through streamlining business and clinical processes, and improving patient care, said Philip Pead, chairman, president and CEO of Per-Se Technologies.
In hospital IT, Per-Se will enable McKesson enhance its services with expanded connectivity and tools to improve cash flow and business office productivity. Per-Se will also enhance McKesson’s resource management services with staff management software.
In physician offices, Per-Se provides practice management software to the small-office physician market and business management outsourcing services to hospital-affiliated and academic physician group practices. The addition of this complementary product line will allow McKesson to market the combined products and services to physicians in groups of all sizes.
In retail pharmacies, Per-Se adds retail claims management to McKesson’s capabilities and bolsters its offering in pharmacy management software. Per-Se offers pharmacy management systems that streamline and connect pharmacy operations and also operates the nation’s largest electronic pharmacy network.
Overall, the acquisition of Per-Se provides McKesson with a platform to further strengthen the relationships among pharmacies, manufacturers, physicians, hospitals, payors and patients. With the acquisition of Per-Se, McKesson estimates the scale of transaction-processing services and associated offerings for physicians and hospitals will more than double, to approximately 560 million transactions annually, representing an estimated $300 billion in billed charges.
