Everyday Health Group acquires Castle Connolly Medical

A health care services company with roots in Westchester County has merged with a similar business that educates patients and professionals.

Everyday Health Group acquired Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., according to a news release. The price of the deal and other terms were not disclosed.

Castle Connolly was established in 1992 by John K. Castle and John J. Connolly, and grew out of their work at New York Medical College, Valhalla, where Castle served on the board of trustees and Connolly was president.

Connolly, according to a recently published interview, was leaving the college and looking for something different to do.

He said Castle came up with the idea of publishing books to help people find good doctors, “since so many of our friends would call us and ask for recommendations because of our association with the college.”

Many rankings of doctors are based on patients”™ reviews. That”™s good for establishing bedside manner but does not measure clinical excellence, the founders believe. Their rankings are based on nominations by doctors, who are asked, for instance, which specialists they would take their own family members to.

Castle Connolly screens the nominees”™ credentials, including education, residencies, fellowships, hospital appointments, disciplinary history and malpractice history.

Castle Connolly is best known, perhaps, for its Top Doctors database, with more than 55,000 profiles of physicians nationwide. It also publishes a Top Hospitals directory and offers other services to patients, health care professionals and corporations.

The acquisition will enable Everyday Health to offer Castle Connolly”™s data to 53 million health consumers who use its site every month.

Both companies are based in Manhattan. Everyday Health serves essentially the same audiences, providing health and wellness materials to consumers, for example, and medical news and continuing education services to professionals.

It is a division of J2 Global Inc., an internet services company with cloud services and digital media, based in Los Angeles. It is publicly traded and has a market cap of $3.6 billion.