Lexum, the Czech opthalomology chain backed by ARX Equity Partners has bought Intermedica, a chain of three clinics in Poland from Danish/Swedish healthcare recruitment and hospital operator Transmedica.

Brian Wardrop at ARX wouldn’t reveal terms or sales, but Intermedica is claimed to be the largest ophthalmology chain in Poland. Transmedica chief executive Karsten Ramløv Svendsen said the business, whose customers are almost entirely private, was badly hit in 2009 by the recession, although he says trade is coming back now and that 2008 was good, adding: “We were talking to the Polish National Health Fund for public sector work but getting funding is very difficult at the moment.” In the Czech Republic most of Lexum’s work is carried out for the statutory insurers. About half sales are from LASIK with the remainder from cataracts. Svendsen says that ARX plans to build up a Pan-East European chain.

Transmedica, which is half owned by Odin, the Danish private equity fund, claims to be one of the biggest healthcare recruitment companies in Scandinavia. Its speciality is placing entire surgical teams on a 1-2 year outsource contract – work it has done in the UK and Greenland as well. “If you have 100 hips we can arrange a team,” he says.

It also owns and runs a substantial 70,000 square metre, 90 bed hospital in Sweden, which specializes in rheumatism and carries out work for both the Danish and Swedish public sectors, particularly orthopaedic surgery on shoulders, hips, fingers and knees.