Fruci Financial Services Inc., a Spokane-based medical management and billing company with 86 employees, has been merged into Portland-based Anesthesiologists Associated Inc. (AAI) and has assumed the AAI name.


Fruci Financial, which was founded here in 1981 by brothers Dave, Paul, and Roger Fruci, provides medical management and billing services mostly to anesthesiologists in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The company decided to merge with AAI, which handles medical management and billing services in Oregon and California, to develop a stronger presence throughout the West Coast, says Dave Fruci, who had been president of Fruci Financial. Fruci declines to disclose the terms of the transaction, which was effective March 1.


Dave Fruci will continue to oversee the Spokane operation and likely will assume some additional management duties, while Paul and Roger Fruci no longer will be involved in the medical-billing operation. All 86 Fruci Financial employees are expected to be retained by AAI, which employed 200 people prior to the merger, AAI says. Fruci says that over the long-term, he hopes that the Spokane office will grow and that it will need to hire additional employees.


We felt that this was a perfect match and that the merger would be a way of strengthening our systems and organization without sacrificing the quality that we have maintained in the past, Fruci says.


The renamed operation will continue to occupy space in a 28,000-square-foot downtown building that the Fruci family owns at 218 N. Bernard, and will continue to share that building with Fruci & Associates PS, a certified public accounting firm here that is owned by Paul Fruci. Fruci & Associates wasnt involved in the merger and it will continue to operate as a separate company, Dave Fruci says. It employs about 30 people.


In addition to its headquarters in Portland and now the office here, AAI operates offices in Walnut Creek and Tarzana, Calif. Before the merger, Fruci says that AAI was handling about two and a half times the business volume that Fruci Financial handled. According to AAIs Web site, the company bills for about 500 anesthesiologists.