A Medical Device Daily

Water Street Healthcare Partners and Wind Point Partners said they have finalized a deal to merge Physiotherapy Associates (PA; Memphis, Tennessee) and Benchmark Medical (Malvern, Pennsylvania)to create a national leader in outpatient rehabilitation services.

Water Street, which recently acquired Physiotherapy Associates from Stryker (Kalamazoo, Michigan) in a $150 million deal (Medical Device Daily, June 5, 2007), and Wind Point, which has owned Benchmark since 2000, will be the majority owners of the combined company.

Operating under the name Physiotherapy Associates , the company will generate combined revenues of about $420 million, employ 5,500 people and operate more than 800 clinics offering physical therapy, orthotic and prosthetic services to millions of patients in communities throughout the U.S.

Bill Floyd, CEO of Benchmark, has been named the new CEO of Physiotherapy Associates.

“Our advantage as a combined company will be our ability to serve local communities more effectively because we understand their specific needs and, at the same time, have an extensive, national network of support and resources that we can leverage,” said Floyd.

Cardinal Health (Dublin, Ohio), a provider of products and services that improve the safety and productivity of healthcare, reported that it has completed its tender offer for Viasys Healthcare (Conshohocken, Pennsylvania), and the acquisition will be completed shortly.

Cardinal’s $1.5 billion offer for Viasys was first disclosed in May (MDD, May 15, 2007) through the initial tender offer that expired at midnight EDT on June 20 and the subsequent tender offer that expired at 6 p.m. EDT on June 27, a total of about 29.3 million shares of Viasys common stock were tendered for $42.75 per share, about 88% of all outstanding shares.

Cardinal said it will complete the acquisition by means of a merger, where each remaining Viasys share will be converted into the right to receive $42.75 per share, in cash, without interest.

As a result of the merger, Viasys will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Cardinal.

The acquisition expands Cardinal Health’s clinical and medical product offerings for global, acute-care customers and, will establish the company as a leader in the more than $4 billion respiratory care market, the company said the business will be integrated into Cardinal Health’s Medical Products Manufacturing segment.

In other dealmaking news: Clinical diagnostics company Dade Behring (Deerfield, Illinois) reported that it has granted certain rights to Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, California) for the combined use of the emerging cardiac markers placental growth factor (PIGF), soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1(sFlt-1), soluble CD40 ligand (sCD40L) and pregnancy associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A).

In addition, Beckman Coulter has granted certain cardiac-related rights to Dade Behring for the use of PAPP-A. Studies show all of these cardiac markers to have potential to be useful in the diagnosis and prognosis of cardiovascular disease, which remains the leading cause of death worldwide.

“Sharing the rights to these emerging cardiac markers allows the new tests to become more widely available to the millions of patients with cardiovascular disease,” said Jim Reid-Anderson, president/CEO and chairman of Dade Behring.

“If we are successful in developing tests based on these markers, the agreements with Dade Behring will likely accelerate the pace of market development making the benefits more widely available to patients with cardiovascular disease,” said Scott Garrett, president /CEO of Beckman Coulter.

In addition to these emerging cardiac markers having potential to be useful in the risk assessment, prognosis or diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, they may also provide independent, complementary information to routine cardiac markers such as Troponin I, NT-proBNP and high sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), among others.