Pharos Capital Group, a private equity firm based in Dallas and Nashville, has acquired telepsychiatry services provider FasPsych in partnership with the company's founder, Ed Irby.
Irby, along with the company’s management team, rolled a significant equity stake in conjunction with the transaction.
FasPsych, founded in 2007 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, manages a specialised pool of contracted psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners from across the country to provide telepsychiatry services via real-time, interactive televideo communication.
Services are primarily provided in the Southwest US to hospitals, community mental health centres, residential mental health centres and various other mental health facilities facing long term struggles recruiting and maintaining their own healthcare providers. FasPsych offers psychiatric evaluation and consultation, medication management, on-call services and remote medical director functions, among other services.
“Pharos has been impressed with the FasPsych management team’s ability to drive consistent growth and strong operating profitability at the company, while simultaneously building a reputation for quality service centered around affordable care and respect for the patient," says Jim Phillips, partner at Pharos Capital.
Irby and his management team will continue to lead the company going forward, building on their successful track record of recruiting experienced clinicians, expanding into new geographies, and penetrating existing markets to drive strong growth and increased profitability.
Irby says: “The company's expansion plans include moving into new territories, aggressive recruitment to increase the number of clinicians to meet growing demand and extending services to numerous end-user adjacencies.”
"We are very excited to be working with the Pharos team. Pharos shares our vision of improving access to mental health services, and their operations expertise and financial resources will be invaluable as we aim to broaden our reach to both patients and providers,” said Abraham Barton, FasPsych's CEO.
This marks the sixth portfolio investment from Pharos Fund III, following Pharos’s acquisitions of Seaside Healthcare, a behavioural health services provider; Employee Benefit Solutions, a provider of healthcare cost containment and wellness programs; Motion PT, a leading provider of physical therapy and occupational therapy in the Northeast; Dermatology and MedSpa, a provider of medical/surgical and cosmetic dermatology services; and Beacon Specialised Living Services, a provider of residential healthcare services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Bass, Berry & Sims served as legal counsel to Pharos and BDO was Pharos’s financial consultant. Kaufman & Canoles, PC served as FasPsych’s legal adviser and Mulkey & Company, PC was its financial consultant.
