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TransUnion (TRU) to Acquire HPS, Boost Healthcare Suite

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TransUnion’s (TRU - Free Report) subsidiary — TransUnion Healthcare — inked a deal to acquire Healthcare Payment Specialists (“HPS”). Based in Fort Worth, TX, Healthcare Payment Specialists assists healthcare service providers in boosting medical reimbursements. The deal is expected to be closed in the second quarter of 2018, subject to pending regulatory approvals.

The deal, expected to boost TransUnion’s healthcare solutions services, will see the integration of TransUnion Healthcare’s Revenue Protection solutions with HPS’ innovative technology.

TransUnion Healthcare’s Revenue Protection solutions help hospitals and other similar healthcare service providers prevent revenue leakage by engaging patients early in the financial process, ensuring the payment of earned revenues through identification and maximization ofreimbursement opportunities and optimization of collection strategies. This helps to streamline the processes and reduce costs. The company has successfully recovered more than $3 billion in cash for its entire client base, while working with more than 1500 hospitals and health systems.

To maximize reimbursements, HPS focuses on payment areas with superior technology and deep domain expertise - which act as the key driving factors. Medicare Bad Debt (MBD) helps in identifying reimbursable bad debts. Medicare Disproportionate Share (DSH) helps serve low-income patients and raise their DSH reimbursement with multiple data sources.  HPS also offers complementary services in the areas of Transfer Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRG) and Indirect Medical Education/Shadow Billing.  

We believe HPS’s product portfolio will perfectly complement TransUnion Healthcare in enhancing its Revenue Protection solutions. The merged entity is expected to provide greater returns to both providers and patients, with raised reimbursements. Further, it will aid in improving the patient’s financial experience..

Growing Healthcare Services Suite

The market for Medicare reimbursement optimization is showing strong growth, contributing 20% to total healthcare expenditures in the United States. Greater patient financial responsibility, focus on cost management and regulatory supervision are acting as key driving factors, enabling healthcare providers to rely on data and analytical tools to better manage their revenue growth.

In view of the significant commercial opportunity offered by the market for healthcare operations, we believe that the proposed buyout of HPS is a prudent move by the company aimed at strengthening its healthcare operations. TransUnion’s U.S. Information Services (USIS) and Healthcare operating segments are aggregated into its USIS reportable segment. Under USIS, Decision Services (20% of USIS revenue) – a sub unit – recorded year-over-year revenue growth in 2017 and 2016 due to growth in the healthcare industry. For 2017, decision services revenues increased $36.3 million compared with 2016.

To make the maximum out of this growing healthcare business, TransUnion continues to look for strategic investments/acquisitions. In 2016, the company completed two acquisitions, RTech Healthcare Revenue Technologies, Inc. and Auditz, LLC, which enhanced its domestic healthcare offerings in areas of revenue protection and identification and recovery of payments.

Zacks Rank & Price Performance

Currently, TransUnion is a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

A glimpse of the company’s price trend reveals that the stock has had an impressive run on the bourse in the last year. Shares of TransUnion have returned 62.5%, outperforming the industry’s gain of 27%.

 

Other Stocks to Consider

Some other top-ranked stocks in the broader Business Services sector include The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (DNB - Free Report) , Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) , and Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (BR - Free Report) . All the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2.

The long-term expected earnings per share growth rates for Dun & Bradstreet, Automatic Data Processing and Broadridge are 4.5%, 11% and 10%, respectively.

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