The year is ending on a high note for mergers and acquisitions in the Home Health & Hospice sector. Deal volume reached 54 transactions by mid-December, and could go higher as we finish up the year. Last year ended with 51 transactions.

Consolidation continued, as buyers such as Kindred Healthcare (NYSE: KND) and Epic Health Services announced four acquisitions apiece. Three other companies, Almost Family (NASDAQ: AFAM), Jordan Health Services and PSA Healthcare, each made three acquisitions. Eight private equity firms made nine deals. Blue Wolf Capital Partners was the sole firm to announce two in this sector.

Deal value wasn’t as impressive in 2016, but that is because some of the larger deals didn’t disclose financial terms. With about 10 days left in the year, combined spending in this sector is nearly $1.2 billion. That’s up 121% compared with 2015’s very low $525 million, but far off 2014’s robust $3.0 billion in spending.

The largest deals announced in this sector came from private equity firms. In late August, Frazier Healthcare Partners disclosed it agreed to pay $418 million for a majority interest in Matrix Medical Network, an in-home assessment and care management company owned by Providence Service Corporation (NASDAQ: PRSC).

Earlier in the year, Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe acquired InnovAge, a Colorado not-for-profit provider of senior care programs and services, including the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), in-home care services, healthcare and day programs, care management services, memory loss programs and senior housing. The price was $196 million.

Bain Capital Private Equity announced a major acquisition in this space in December, albeit without a price. Webster Capital hired Goldman Sachs & Co. back in April 2016 to shop its pediatric skilled home-care services company, Epic Health Services. Epic provides pediatric skilled nursing, therapy, developmental services and home medical solutions for medically fragile children, and also offers a range of adult home care services.

Webster acquired Epic in 2010, in a deal valued at less than $50 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The tuck-in acquisitions began in 2012, building the company out from locations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas to 77 locations in 21 states, by the end of  2016.

Epic announced four deals of its own this year, adding agencies in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. None of the deals disclosed prices.

At the time Webster began shopping Epic back in April, the WSJ estimated the target might be valued at $1 billion, based on its $80 million in EBITDA in 2015, and the demand for health care services companies in this sector, which “typically command price multiples of around 12x” EBITDA.

That value is probably dead-on, given all we’ve heard in the last two years at healthcare conferences. “Twelve is the new 10” still resonates in the healthcare services sectors. Pediatric patients with cancer or chronic conditions require specialized care, and that care is mostly covered by Medicaid. How that will be reimbursed after Donald Trump’s inauguration next month remains to be seen, but Bain Capital didn’t wait to find out.