Power healing

The numbers for Reno-based Accelerated Care Plus are easy enough to understand: Annual revenues of about $40 million. Revenues growing at 40 percent annually. Seventy new customers mostly nursing homes around the United States signing up each month. Some 3,000 long-term care facilities about a sixth of the total in the United States are ACP clients.

But understanding how ACP generates these numbers? That takes a little more patience.

Start with some history from about 30 years ago:

John Beach, ACP's polished chief executive officer, and Chris Castel, its deep-thinking chief technology officer, were both involved in the development of electrical stimulation devices. Those devices deliver electrical charges on a patient's body causing a patient's muscles to contract. That strengthens muscles and speeds healing.

The two merged their operations to create ACP. The company was acquired by Sun Health Care Group, but Castel and Beach got it back after Sun Health Care Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1999.

In early 2000, ACP moved to Reno with exactly four employees and not a dime of revenue.

But Beach and Castel had no plans to run a little company and pull it up by its bootstraps. Instead, they designed ACP from the first to be a big company investing, for instance, $1 million at the startup to get the legal work done right.

The company's catalog these days includes numerous boxes that deliver electrical stimulation and ultrasound treatments, but that's a field crowded with dozens of competitors large and small.

ACP's advantage: It doesn't sell boxes stuffed with electronics. Instead, it delivers everything that long-term care facilities or, occasionally, professional sports teams need to deliver electrical stimulation, ultrasound and other clinical treatments.

"We're not selling boxes. We're selling solutions," says Beach. "We're specializing in a market where no one else has specialized."

Customers pay a monthly rental not a long-term lease, but a rent that can be cancelled on 30-days notice for ACP's system. Along with the boxes, therapists at ACP locations receive training in standardized treatment plans, regular visits from an ACP professional, maintenance and calibration of equipment and other support.

ACP's customers include major nursing home companies the sorts of companies that operate 200 sites or more and they like the turnkey system because it provides them with a tool to gain more referrals from doctors and hospital discharge planners, Beach says.

Some long-term care facilities even are using ACP's marketing support to position themselves as providers of outpatient therapy services opening new revenue streams in the process.

And the educational support provided by the company helps nursing homes retain hard-to-recruit physical therapists. The company-sponsored training often helps professionals meet state continuing education requirements.

But those month-to-month rentals of boxes are just as important as the company's technology in keeping competitors at bay.

"It takes a tremendous deployment of capital," says Beach.

ACP has invested about $29 million in the equipment rented by its clients, and the investment is growing rapidly as ACP signs up dozens of new sites each month.

Launched with about $4 million in capital provided by Castel, Beach and their families and friends, the company grew with debt financing arranged by Bank of America.

In mid-2007, privately held ACP got a big shot of equity through the sale of $24 million in convertible preferred stock to a fund organized by The ComVest Group, a private equity firm headquartered at West Palm Beach, Fla.

Mark Lama, a partner in The ComVest Group, says he's a believer in the ACP's management and its products.

"I believe that ACP helps people recover more quickly, with better outcomes and with less cost than traditional therapies," Lama says. "In addition, I was very impressed with the management team's experience, drive and commitment."

ACP is putting that capital to work in development of new products. Castel, for instance, is excited as he shows off a therapy cycle that's especially designed for geriatric patients, many of whom can't use traditional exercise bicycles.

The company also is making forays into the home health-care market it provides at-home units to help reduce pain from arthritic knees and it's scouting around for acquisitions in the medical-equipment arena.

What's not growing quickly, however, is head count.

The company's nationwide staff of about 150 includes 40 in Reno who handle research and development, headquarters support and some distribution. Manufacturing is outsourced. Most of ACP's staff, however, is spread across the country, providing support to its clients and the physical therapists who work for them.

An ACP program manager can oversee about 30 meaning it needs to recruit a couple of new ones nearly every month.

The company also has set its sights on independence, even though would-be acquirers regularly show up on its doorstep.

"We're not interested," Beach says flatly.