KPMG entered into an agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Beacon Partners, a healthcare consulting firm.

Beacon Partners has a national practice that serves clients across all healthcare provider sub-segments throughout the U.S., and is ranked 15th on Modern Healthcare’s list of top healthcare consulting firms. The addition of Beacon Partners’ credentialed consultants will provide KPMG with broad-based capabilities in core provider business applications and electronic health records (EHR) systems. The influx of personnel will add critical skills to KPMG’s Operations Improvement team, supplementing its revenue cycle, performance improvement, clinical process improvement, business planning, ACO development, and analytics capabilities.

Beacon Partners will mark the ninth acquisition KPMG has made in the last seventeen months. Each transaction has added depth to its professional service offerings in key sectors including healthcare, financial services, industrial manufacturing and technology.

“Healthcare is among our firm’s strongest and most promising marketplace opportunities. As the healthcare industry experiences unprecedented transformation — with increased regulations, technological disruption, and wide scale adoption of new business and operating models driving demand for our services — this acquisition will strengthen KPMG’s market position in this industry,” said John Veihmeyer, global chairman of KPMG.

“For 26 years, Beacon Partners has provided comprehensive advisory services and healthcare vendor system expertise to help our clients improve their operational, clinical, and financial performance,” said Ralph Fargnoli, president and CEO of Beacon Partners. “With the convergence of many healthcare initiatives in the immediate future such as ICD-10, Meaningful Use, Population Health Management, Privacy and Security, Revenue and Costs Management, and Analytics, there are many opportunities and challenges as healthcare providers position themselves for a successful future. The integration of Beacon Partners and KPMG will provide our clients an even deeper level of service and expertise that will become increasingly important to healthcare providers as they plan and implement their strategies for success over the next few years.”

Liam Walsh, U.S. advisory industry leader, Healthcare & Life Sciences stated, “We found the strategic rationale of this acquisition to be extremely compelling. The Beacon Partners team has made significant inroads with hospital systems, academic medical centers, integrated delivery networks, and physician groups around the country.” Walsh continued, “When coupled with our recent transactions involving technology consulting firm Zanett Commercial Solutions and digitalmobile firm Cynergy Systems, this acquisition significantly enhances the end-to-end transformation platform that we are diligently building within the Healthcare IT market. Additionally, we expect the resulting platform to drive additional strategic and pull-through opportunities for our performance improvement, compliance, cyber and data and analytics capabilities.”

As one of the largest healthcare management consulting firms, Beacon Partners is chosen by organizations in the healthcare community to provide advisory services to improve overall operational, clinical and financial performance with the adoption of information technology.