Feel sorry for the statutory insurers who pay for healthcare for the citizenry of France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. No one loves them.

A Cambridge academic told me about a mad and brilliant Icelander, Dr Kári Stefánsson, who is pioneering genetic variant testing for the masses based upon the famous Icelandic database.

“Good news on expansion, good news on debt and good news on profits” was how Bruno de Rochebrochard at stockbroker Raymond James greeted figures from Orpea, the largest French care home and hospital group, which set out forecasts for the next three years. Orpea now has over 28,000 beds across 300 sites in five countries.

Germans are much more likely to go abroad for planned treatment than they were 2-3 years ago, according to a survey from the Technischer Krankenkasse, Germany’s second largest statutory insurer.

On the face of it, providing outpatient healthcare in Eastern Europe paid for by the public sector should be a huge opportunity. It is a huge market and one which often doesn’t provide a particularly good service. As one private equity investor put it to us: “why battle it out in the private sector which covers maybe 5-7% of the market, when you could be addressing the 90% plus of the population who can’t afford it.”

We interview BC Partners director Ewald Walgenbach about BC’s creation, through three rapid-fire deals, of Synlab, Europe’s third largest lab group.

Slovak lab group Alpha Medical is now number two in the Czech market, following its acquisition of Aeskulab. It has also just entered the Polish market. Healthcare Europa talks to Peter Lednicky, managing director of Alpha, which is 100% owned by private equity group Penta Investments about the markets and his plans.