Despite the controversies, KKR hasn’t lost its hankering for health care companies.
The buyout giant is nearing a deal to buy Acadia Healthcare — a nationwide chain of addiction treatment clinics — in what would mark a second round of private equity ownership for the company, The Post has learned.
A source said KKR, controlled by billionaire Henry Kravis, is “very, very well positioned” to win an auction for publicly traded Acadia, which has a $3.8 billion market cap and another $3 billion in debt. Other suitors in the Jefferies-run auction include TPG Capital and Bain Capital, a second source said.
In 2015, Acadia paid $1.2 billion to acquire CRC Health from Bain, the buyout firm founded by Mitt Romney. Under Bain’s ownership, CRC, the largest provider of residential troubled-teen and drug recovery centers, allegedly neglected and abused patients, according to a 2012 exposé by the online magazine Salon.
Now, KKR likely believes there will be increased federal reimbursement to treat opioid addiction, making Acadia attractive, said Paul Gionfriddo, president of nonprofit group Mental Health America.
Nevertheless, Gionfriddo added that buyout firms have a history of slashing costs to boost profits and pay off the debt that funds their acquisitions — a strategy that’s directly at odds with patient care.
“You run the risk of responding more to investor needs than patient needs,” Gionfriddo said. “When you look at quality of care, the higher-rated facilities tend to be nonprofit, and the for-profit tend to be near or below the [average level of care].”
In 2006, KKR led a leveraged buyout of the hospital network HCA. Gionfriddo sat on an advisory board of an HCA hospital in Palm Beach, Fla., from 2008 through 2010.
“Patient satisfaction was way down, and it bedeviled the facility,” he said, adding that most of the complaints came because of overworked staff.
In the mental health niche where Acadia operates, it may not be profitable to open centers in rural areas and in states that have not expanded Medicare, according to Gionfriddo.
Moreover, many children’s services do not have high reimbursement rates.
This summer, KKR closed a $9.9 billion buyout of Envision Healthcare, which supplies doctors to, and runs, hospital emergency rooms. It was KKR’s biggest buyout since the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Neither Acadia nor KKR returned calls.