Monarch’s Parent Merges With Software Firm Vectis
The company that manages Monarch HealthCare--an organization of 600 Orange County doctors--said Monday that it has finally found a partner.
MHC Medical Management, which runs the Mission Viejo doctors’ outfit, said it merged with Vectis, a Waltham, Mass., software company. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Officials at the two privately held companies said the combined entity, which will be known as Vectis, will sell Vectis software for managing physician practices to doctors groups across the country.
John Gannon, most recently an executive with the troubled MedPartners Inc., was hired as chairman, president and chief executive of the combined company, officials said.
The new company will have its headquarters in Mission Viejo, but officials said it hasn’t been determined whether Gannon will move here from Birmingham, Ala. Gannon couldn’t be reached for comment.
In 1995, Monarch explored a possible merger with the former Orange Coast Managed Care Services Inc., which represented hundreds of doctors practicing at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange. The talks broke off a year later.
St. Joseph Health System, which owns the hospital, recently acquired managed-care contracts from Orange Coast’s purchaser, the now-bankrupt FPA Medical Inc.
Monarch’s doctors provide care for more than 115,000 patients through health plans.
Gannon, 59, joined Birmingham-based MedPartners in August 1996 as president of its eastern operations and became president of its physician practice management unit less than a year later, according to a MedPartners securities filing.
For the first six months of this year, MedPartners lost $29 million on revenue of $3 billion.
Monarch officials said Monday that Gannon left MedPartners early last summer. Before that, he was a partner with the KPMG Peat Marwick accounting firm. In his last job with KPMG, Gannon was in charge of its national strategy and marketing practice in health care and life sciences.
In two weeks, Vectis will begin offering its software to all primary-care physicians in its local network.
