PhillyBioCapital: Humana buys Philly-based Enclara; NeuroFlow raises $7.5 million

Philadelphia Inquirer (PA)

Dec. 17--Two Philadelphia-based health-care tech firms announced big investments from out-of-town firms Monday.

Humana Inc., one of the largest U.S. health insurance companies, said it has agreed to buy Center City-based Enclara Healthcare, whose software speeds prescription drugs to nearly 100,000 hospice residents and other chronic-care patients each day. Enclara employs 800, half of them in Philadelphia and elsewhere in Pennsylvania.

Sellers are Enclara founder Andy Horowitz, members of his management team, and Penn medical school and Wharton School graduate Mitchell Blutt's New York investment firm, Consonance Capital Partners.

Humana won't say what it will pay, noting only that the deal would have no "material" impact on the Louisville, Ky.-based buyer, which expects to collect profits of more than $2.5 billion on sales of over $60 billion this year. Humana will "leverage" Enclara to expand its own services, said Humana Pharmacy Solutions president Scott Greenwell in a statement.

"There will be no impact to Enclara's employees, operations, and business," said Humana spokesperson Marina Renneke. "Humana plans to integrate Enclara into its broader pharmacy and strategies through a multi-stage approach over the next two years."

The Enclara team headed by Horowitz, a lawyer, and Stephen Phenneger, a La Salle University grad and veteran health-care investment accountant who serves as Enclara's chief financial officer, did "an outstanding job growing the company organically and through acquisitions," said Consonance cofounder Benjamin Edmands in a statement.

Horowitz, in turn, praised Consonance as "a critical partner throughout Enclara's evolution over the past five years from a small hospice-focused pharmacy into a national full-service specialized pharmacy management platform. We look forward to the next chapter for Enclara under Humana's ownership."

Horowitz started in the pharma supply business in the 1990s with two firms, Partners HealthCare and Solutions Healthcare. He acquired Garden State Hospice, renamed the group Care Alternatives, and sold it in 2004, plowing proceeds into Enclara.

In 2013, he added Turn-Key Health, a "population health management company" focused on targeting cost-efficient palliative care to seriously ill and dying patients. The next year, Horowitz joined with Consonance to buy Philadelphia-based ExcelleRx/Hospice Pharmacia and combine them with Enclara's hospice benefits group as Enclara Pharmacia. They also bought PBM Plus, a card-based pharmacy copayment service, which they renamed GuidantRx.

Those businesses and Enclara's Avanti Health Care Unit will now join Humana.

The deal is expected to close next spring. Humana was advised by Centerview Partners and law firm Crowell & Moring; Enclara was advised by Evercore Inc.

Separately, NeuroFlow, a 28-person, Philadelphia-based behavioral health medical software start-up whose clients include Jefferson Health, says it has raised $7.5 million in its first venture capital fund-raising round, led by San Francisco-based Builders VC, and also including Dreamit Ventures, Spring Point Partners, Penn-based Red & Blue Ventures, and AWT Private Investments.

"In the sea of mental health [software], NeuroFlow stood out to us as being the one that was most 'clinical grade,'" said Builders VC partner Mark H. Goldstein in a statement.

NeuroFlow will use the money to hire more marketing and data science people and boost its "product integrations and data science," working with "hundreds of providers to support the overall health of tens of thousands of individuals," said NeuroFlow chief executive Chris Molaro in a statement. "We're helping patients get better faster."

___

Visit The Philadelphia Inquirer at www.inquirer.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.