All Featured Insights

Hospital and health system leaders show growing interest in a range of affiliation structures and contractual opportunities that stop short of full integration.

With 10 announced hospital and health system transactions, Q3 2022 numbers were slightly below the activity levels seen in Q1 and Q2. They reflect the recent trend of activity running below historical, pre-pandemic levels.

Skilled nursing facilities face an evolving and increasingly challenging environment. These changes are prompting health systems to reassess their strategic options for providing post-acute care.

As health systems look to the future, surgical volume will continue shifting from HOPDs to ASCs. Health systems must be innovative and flexible to ensure that they participate in that growth with physician partners and others.

We saw a full return in Q2 2022 to the pandemic-era trend of fewer but larger hospital and health system transactions. Several large transactions boosted the average smaller party size to a record-setting $1.5 billion.

Healthcare is undergoing a major realignment as stakeholders compete for consumers’ attention. The different strategies intersect at the physician’s office, and physicians today face an unprecedented array of practice options.

Health system M&A activity was down in the first quarter of 2022, with both a smaller number of deals and a smaller average transaction size. A high percentage of deals involved for-profit sellers.

Hospitals and health systems are feeling the full effects of the Great Resignation as labor expenses climb despite lower staffing levels. As a result, hospitals are paying higher wages to compete for qualified personnel. Read the Winter 2022 Kaufman Hall Report for strategies for improving recruitment and retention.

The number of hospital and health system M&A transactions was down in 2021, but the size of transactions was up significantly, with the largest percentage of announced “mega merger” transactions in the last six years.

Kaufman Hall managing directors Courtney Midanek and Dawn Samaris discuss how health systems are trying to play a more holistic role in meeting behavioral health needs in their communities, and how a partnership strategy can help them achieve their goals.

Partnerships, affiliations, mergers, and acquisitions have been—and will continue to be—an essential tool for hospitals and health systems as they have worked to build integrated health systems that can respond and adapt to a rapidly changing healthcare landscape.

Transaction volume for hospital and health system mergers and acquisitions was lower in Q3 2021 compared with pre-pandemic levels, but average seller size by revenue and total transacted revenue remain high.