Firms Look To Trade Medical Products Provider

Quad-C Management Inc. appears to be close to buying Joerns Healthcare LLC, a company that makes beds and other products for the health care industry, from Vestar Capital Partners, according to a regulatory filing.

Charlottesville, Va.-based Quad-C will invest in the deal from its seventh fund, a $1 billion pool of capital it raised in 2005, according to the filing.

Joerns Healthcare provides beds, furnishings, lifts and slings, as well as wound prevention and treatment products for hospitals and other health care providers. The Stevens Point, Wis.-based company also sells a service called WoundLink, an online resource for health care practitioners for the identification and treatment of wounds; and OneSource, a program that enables assisted living communities, senior housing and acute care facilities to buy furnishings, accessories and services in a packaged format. According to the company’s Web site, it was founded in 1889 in St. Paul, Minn., as Joerns Brothers Furniture.

Vestar Capital bought the company in 2000 via Vestar Capital Partners IV, a $2.5 billion fund the New York-based shop raised in 1999; that fund is 93 percent invested, according to the firm’s Web site.

Quad-C typically makes control equity investments of $25 million to $150 million in companies valued between $50 million and $500 million. The firm invests across a wide variety of industries, including health care, building products, education, restaurants and specialty chemicals.

Vestar invests in companies that range in value from $250 million to $3 billion in the consumer, financial, health care, and media industries, among others.

Executives from Quad-C, Vestar Capital and Joerns Healthcare could not immediately be reached for comment.