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Healthcare Consulting Merger Makes Studer Group A Division Of Huron Consulting

Photo via Flickr//Phalinn Ooi

Huron Consulting, a Chicago-based healthcare consulting firm, has acquired Pensacola-based Studer Group for a reported $325 million in cash, and $2 million in Huron stock.

The transaction creates a firm with a 1,500 member workforce and $904 million in annual revenues. Quint Studer, who owns the Group with his wife Rishy, says the deal originated in 2011, when private equity firm JMI Equity purchased a stake in The Studer Group.

Common threads running through the two companies include healthcare consulting and education. They’ve also worked with clients who have retained the services of both firms. That, says Studer, has opened the doors to a more formal partnership.

“Periodically over the years, we’ve been in the same organizations with them,” said Studer. “So we’ve learned how it is to work side-by-side. The feeling was, on Huron’s point of view, is they like Studer Group and by being one we can do even better things in health care.”

The areas of expertise within the consulting and education frameworks also complement each other. Filling in the gaps, so to speak.

They (Huron) focus a lot on health care revenue cycle; process improvement and cost efficiency, we (Studer Group) focus in on creating the right culture for the employees, the patients and the physicians.

Studer Group and Huron have worked together to the extent that in some of Quint Studer’s presentations the past few years, he has used Huron-produced slides. He says they do well in outlining the “external pressures in health care.”

As far as location, Studer Group isn’t going anywhere. It is a stand-alone division of Huron that will continue to be headquartered in Pensacola.

Last year, Studer Group hired 40 people, and the idea now is to stay with the original hiring blueprint, which has seen the firm grow from four employees in 2000, to the current level of 235.

Studer says partnering with Huron will have no effect on Studer Group projects and plans moving into 2015. Those plans include “Studer Conferences” set for later this year in Orlando, Toronto, Washington DC, Chicago, and Las Vegas.