Moss Adams to combine with Southwest Consulting

Moss Adams, a Top 100 Firm based in Seattle, is planning to combine with Southwest Consulting Associates, a provider of reimbursement services for hospitals and health-system organizations in Plano, Texas, effective Jan. 1, 2020.

The deal will grow Moss Adams’ health care consulting practice and quadruple the size of its existing cost reimbursement team, expanding the scope of its services to nationwide hospitals and health systems.

“With the SCA acquisition, we’ll have clients on a nationwide basis,” said Chris Pritchard, national practice leader of Moss Adams’ health care consulting practice. “They pretty much had operated on the East Coast and middle part of the country. We’ve primarily previously operated in the Western United States, so bringing the two groups together gives us a national footprint.”

Moss Adams' offices in Seattle
Moss Adams' offices in Seattle

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Moss Adams ranked No. 11 on Accounting Today’s 2019 list of the Top 100 Firms, with $691 million in annual revenue. The firm has 340 partners and over 3,200 professionals. SCA’s owner will be joining as a partner and will bring over 26 other SCA staff members to Moss Adams.

SCA was founded in 1989 and has been providing financial consulting services to health providers ever since, servicing more than 400 clients. SCA offers services such as uncompensated care reporting, Medicare reimbursement and cost report appeals, along with health provider reimbursement support.

“On a reimbursement basis, the services combined together create an enterprise solution, so we can handle soup to nuts all the reimbursement services these health systems need,” said Pritchard. “They can outsource it to us or we can provide gap pieces that they may be missing. But the real play was enterprise service capability that another organization can rely on us for. What we’re finding in the market is large health systems are looking to limit their vendors to just a few that are able to scale with them and provide all the services that they need to be successful. With this acquisition and with our overall firm platform, having one of the largest health care practices in the Western United States, we have a lot of girth to meet those needs.”

“Moss Adams has a history of excellent client service and strong corporate culture that complement our existing capabilities, values and long-term growth strategy,” said SCA president Michael Newell in a statement. “The additional resources and services Moss Adams provides will be a great asset to our clients.”

Last year, Moss Adams did a number of M&A deals with other firms, including Baker Peterson Franklin, an accounting and consulting firm in Fresno, California, BPW&C in Albuquerque, New Mexico, AsTech Consulting, a San Francisco-based cyber risk management firm, and Transacction Partners, a firm in Edmonds, Washington, that specializes in outsourced finance and accounting services.

Other M&A deals may be coming. “We’re always looking for good acquisitions that will push our strategies forward,” said Pritchard. “We’re always in talks with a number of organizations.”

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