ATG Rehab adds WestMed's rehab team

RAPID CITY, S.D. - ATG Rehab announced June 9 that it has acquired the complex rehab division of WestMed Rehab.

This is the third buy this year for ATG Rehab, which announced in January that Audax Private Equity was its new majority investor.

"[WestMed's] focus on providing great local service and superior expertise in the area of assistive technology was already in place, so it was a great match for our specialization, which is exactly those things," said Cody Verrett vice president of sales and marketing.

The acquisition will bring the rehab division under the ATG Rehab name, leaving WestMed's other HME operations, including respiratory, orthotics and prosthetics, intact.

"Westmed realized that, with the declining resources in the industry, it makes sense to focus on a smaller operation," said Tim Pederson, one of Westmed's founders. "I think it's a better use of resources."

The three employees in Westmed's rehab division--two ATPs and one rehab tech--will operate out of an office in Rapid City, the first location in the state for ATG Rehab.

"The ATPs that are coming over have a tremendous amount of experience," said Verrett. "We wouldn't have gone into this without the hope that those individuals would be transitioning to us. We wouldn't want to get into a new market without the talent that created that market to begin with."

The rehab division serves more than 800 patients each year. ATG Rehab's new employees will continue to serve customers as usual, with the backing and financial and technological resources ATG can provide, Verrett said. They will be part of the company's mountain region, which is run out of Denver.

ATG's expansion process is going smoothly, Verrett said, because the company does its homework and doesn't take on too many opportunities at a time.

"I think that it has gone really smoothly because we're consistently making decisions where it makes really good business sense," Verrett said.