ProCure has buyer after short bidding round
Just one group turned in a valid bid to buy the Oklahoma City cancer treatment center ProCure, which is under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. The buyer will be a company formed this year by David Raubach, an Oklahoman who formerly served as an health care business development executive based in Tennessee. Raubach's Oklahoma Proton Center LLC agreed to pay more than $17.3 million to acquire ProCure Proton Therapy Center, but the final price has yet to be determined, according to court documents. He declined to give details about the financial backers, but said there is strong backing from a group in Oklahoma City. ProCure filed for bankruptcy in November as patients had trouble finding insurers to cover the treatment. At one point, ProCure was using less than a third of its capacity and eventually stopped taking new patients. Management tried several times to sell or restructure the company's capital structure, but every deal fell through. Filings show it has racked up more than $150 million in debts, including late payments owed on property and equipment. Reached Wednesday by phone as he arrived in Delaware, Raubach said he plans to accept new patients again early next year after an equipment upgrade. The facility opened almost a decade ago in Oklahoma City and offered a different type of radiation treatment to cancer patients. Instead of using X-rays that pass through the body and hit both sick and healthy tissue, ProCure and other proton therapy centers are able to target cancerous masses and limit a person’s radiation exposure. ProCure entered bankruptcy with Raubach's bid in hand. One other potential buyer submitted a bid, but it was found to be deficient and tossed out, according to a filing in Delaware's bankruptcy court. Terms of the sale will be heard in court Thursday. Oklahoma lawmakers in 2015 forced insurers to consider proton therapy on par with other cancer treatments, but
the Legislature stopped short of mandating that insurance companies cover it. Patients have fought back, suing insurers
when they deny coverage. The family of an Oklahoma woman won a multimillion-dollar settlement against Aetna last month.
Raubach previously worked for Tennesseebased Provision Healthcare. He and two other
former employees of that company, Chris Brown and Tom Welch, are part of the new management team. Together they have opened and/or operated six other proton therapy centers, Raubach said.
"The most important thing for us is really that
we view this facility as an important community resource," he said. "We really wanted to put together a plan to keep the facility open and operational, keep the staff employed, and we believe that we've done that."