Asus' FREE Speech Money Club

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there is a lot of competition in the field and the major players are buying up the minors to increase their competitive advantage. I believe this trend will continue until they are down to about half dozen major national players. States like Florida will be the focus as the Medicaid Reform is rolled out. ICS has 5 of the first 15 hospitals for Florida Medicaid hospitalist services. I think they will be getting more as additional counties are brought online. This last year was the start of the Florida Medicaid hospitals. That is good for the contract side of the equation but they will be fighting for good doctors just like the rest of them. Last I heard, ICS had 37 doctors on staff.

FLACS is one of the other main Florida hospitalists competitors of ICS. They were acquired by TeamHealth in July/06.

http://www.flacs.net/flacs/index.html

The Blackstone Group owns 91.1% of TeamHealth when they acquired it through a private equity deal back in Nov/05.

http://www.blackstone.com/private_equity/portfolio.asp?Order=ByPortfolioCompany&ll=t&ul=z

Blackstone Group IPO in June/07 raises billions.

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2007/06/18/daily73.html