These doctors do make house calls.

Home Physicians Management, a company that brings healthcare services to homes and assisted living facilities, has landed an $11.5 million investment from Triangle Capital Corporation (NYSE:TCAP) of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Home Physicians was founded in Chicago in 1995 with just one doctor and a small support staff. Now the company employs nearly 100 people serving patients throughout the Chicago area, northern Indiana and Baltimore, Maryland.

Home Physicians CEO Craig Reiff says that the doctor visits actually help manage health care costs. Many patients who are too sick or are otherwise unable to make it to a doctor’s office wait until their condition worsens, requiring an emergency room visit and possibly a hospital stay. Reiff says his company’s goal is to keep patients out of hospitals and ERs. Now the company is looking to bring that mission into new markets. Reiff said the new investment will be applied to an expansion into additional cities in the eastern part of the country, the southeast in particular. He said the Carolinas are a potential target market but he declined to specify cities. The company serves urban markets and is looking at cities larger than 500,000 people, but perhaps closer to 750,000 people in size. Market entry will also be determined in part by the relationships the company has with insurance providers.

“We’ll be making those decisions in the next six months,” he said.

Home Physicians is owned by private equity firm Triton Pacific Capital Partners. Reiff said the Triangle Capital investment came through connections that Triton Pacific has with Triangle Capital. In a statement, Triangle Capital President and CEO Garland S. Tucker, III said his firm invested in Home Physicians because the company fills a growing need of providing primary care and podiatry services to patients who can’t get to a doctor themselves.

“We believe this is an underserved segment of the health care market with significant growth potential,” he said.

Triangle Capital is a specialty finance company that invests in “lower middle-market companies” throughout the country in various industries. Investments are typically in the range of $5 million to $15 million and profile companies typically have annual revenue between $20 million and $100 million.

The Home Physicians investment consists of senior and junior subordinated debt. Other Triangle Capital investments in the health care space include TBG Anesthesia Management, a Midwest-based physician management company that provides contracted outsourced anesthesiology services to hospitals and medical centers; Genapure, a Florida-based provider of lab testing services whose clients include pharmaceutical firms; and Great Expressions Dental Center, a Michigan-based dental practice management company with locations in six states.

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