Healthcare has been ground zero for COVID-19 since the virus took hold in early March. How the industry has reacted, and how lenders and equity investors are dealing with this new world order, is the subject of this special series.

To get started, we spoke to a friend who runs the healthcare capital markets desk at a leading senior credit provider. He gave us a front-line view of deals amid the worst pandemic of the modern era.

“Physician practice management (PPM) businesses were the first and worst hit,” he reported. “I’m skeptical anyway of projected practice productivity, but procedure volume dropped precipitously with COVID. We and other banks were approached by an anesthesia practice seeking a working capital line of credit. It serves surgery centers and hospitals, and Ebitda went from close to $100 million to zero.

“Most of these procedures were elective, ranging from orthopedic, cardio, and GI. It’s a great franchise. They haven’t lost a single doc. We offered a competitive ABL RC to fund receivables.