Huron Plays ‘Matchmaker’ In Long-Term Care Space With New Consulting Arm

Chicago-based Huron Consulting, which traditionally has ties to the health care world via hospital systems, has cultivated a small team to zero in on attracting clients from the skilled nursing and long-term care industry.

Hand-picked talent and a concerted effort to dismantle the silos in health care set the group apart from other firms that may offer similar services to a wider swath of the care continuum, Huron Consulting leadership told Skilled Nursing News.

So far, the team has a “handful” of clients — operators, investors and lenders — according to Torey Riso, managing director for the less-than-a-year-old consulting arm. Government and nonprofit entities may be potential clients down the road, but for now Riso’s team will focus on for-profit operators, private equity and institutional investors, and lenders.

Deep talent, resources

Riso, formerly the CEO of Blueprint Healthcare Real Estate Advisors, leads the team. He brought on Sara Veit, whose background stems from real estate investment trust (REIT) Omega Healthcare Investors; Veit served as managing director of acquisitions for Omega.

Former Welltower investment executive Andrew Brainard and Birchwood Healthcare Partners CIO Dan Sullivan round out the small team.

“We understand, and now are in a particularly good spot to come up alongside that operator to help be their interpreters, so to speak, with those other groups,” said Riso. “We sit in the middle of those relationships, between the operator, the equity, and the debt.”

Many of the team members were part of startup Hana2.0 Property Group, a spinoff from Aviv REIT Inc. — which was also aimed at growing investments in the skilled nursing sector — but pandemic timing forced the group to close shop in October of last year, Veit said.

Good timing, coupled with resources that only a large consulting firm like Huron could provide, pulled many of these heavy-hitters in the space to join the new consulting arm.

“[Huron has] the capability and the platform to leverage expertise … working with the health systems for over 20 years,” noted Veit. “That’s a unique skill set. Other organizations I was employed by, we didn’t really have that type of expertise. The evolution of our industry is, you can’t look in silos anymore … from the real estate perspective or the operator, or you know, the government, it all has to talk to each other, including the health systems and so I think that’s just a really unique platform to be part of.”

Riso utilizes operating advisor Brian Cloch, CEO of Transitional Care Management, to find an operator that has certain characteristics an investor is looking for. Sometimes that’s distressed debt investments, other times it’s strategic maneuvers for investors that want to better understand skilled nursing as a “unique asset class,” Riso said.

He used a private operator as a hypothetical of how the firm might play “matchmaker” between operator and investor: this operator has built a portfolio of five or six seniors housing assets and via private funds decided to share their story with prospective investors in order to build their portfolio by 25 facilities.

Huron would analyze the operator’s data and present it in a favorable light to the right investor, Riso said, and help the operator scale.

In-house data system

Currently, the consulting arm is developing a software data analytics system for its clients to use when determining the next step in business plans.

Sullivan, with his IT background, is at the forefront of the system’s development; the system is due to launch early next year, Riso said.

Large REITs have software like this to rely on, Sullivan said, but smaller operators often do not. This system will set Huron’s SNF arm apart from other firms dabbling in the space.

“On the operator side, many of these growing operators create a lot of data that they often don’t utilize,” said Sullivan, mentioning data systems that track financials, clinical procedures, and payroll, all using separate tools. “The systems often don’t talk to each other, they often typically include some startup analytics package that’s added on or bolted on after the fact.”

The team will offer investors access to this software too, tailored in a way that makes sense — focusing on the operator’s quarterly and monthly financials.

“Right now they’re getting emailed these financials as Excel files, if they’re lucky, or maybe they’re PDFs,” explained Sullivan.

The in-house system is being designed to adjust standardized data across multiple operators: Sullivan used an equity provider with three operators as an example, adding that the system could offer “deeper data” for buildings among all three operators while the operators could use the same data for asset management.

“We’re creating … a really sophisticated system that would only be available to the largest equity providers, you know, the Welltowers of the world, they have systems like this that are proprietary,” added Sullivan. “The medium and smaller equity investor and operator can’t do that because they just don’t have the scale, and the market is still fragmented enough that most of the buildings are in smaller and medium sized equity providers, smaller and medium sized operators, and I think that we can really add a lot of value that way.”

Riso added that operators don’t have a lot of cash to invest in technology like this themselves, so offering data analysis capabilities, and, even better, a Huron rep to read between the lines, is “exciting.”