Hospitals Are Buying in to Home Health

One anticipated trend that did not come to fruition in 2016 was hospitals entering the home health & hospice space. The advent of bundled payments placed tremendous emphasis on providers to control the patient engagement from start to finish, making it almost imperative for health systems to secure post-acute care providers in the home health and rehabilitation sectors. In 2012 and 2013 combined, there were only two deals involving a hospital purchasing a home health & hospice company. In 2014 and 2015, there were just two deals each year, and in 2016 we saw three. However, in the first month of 2017, three hospital groups have purchased home health & hospice companies.... Read More »

Steward Health Buys 8 Community Health Hospitals

It’s no secret that Community Health Systems (NYSE: CYH) is selling off hospitals and medical office buildings to pay down its $15 billion debt. Its latest deal offloads eight hospitals with a total of 1,818 beds in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania to Steward Health Care LLC for an undisclosed price. The hospitals involved in this deal are Wuesthoff Health System-Melbourne (119 beds) in Melbourne, Wuesthoff Health System-Rockledge (298 beds) in Rockledge, and Sebastian River Medical Center (154 beds) all in Florida; ValleyCare Health System of Ohio, which consists of Northside Medical Center (355 beds) in Youngstown, and Trumbull Memorial Hospital (311 beds) and Hillside Rehabilitation... Read More »

REIT Deals for Hospitals Are Picking Up

Most acquisitions in the Hospital sector are made by another hospital or health system. In 2016, 59% of U.S. hospital acquirers were not-for-profit organizations, down from 65% in 2015 but still the majority. Lately, real estate investment trusts (REITs) have taken an interest in the hospital sector, where there seems to be no end to the supply of struggling standalone hospitals. Eight deals were announced by REITs in 2016, involving 19 hospitals, for a approximately $1.5 billion. Many of the target hospitals or systems were owned by private equity firms which wanted out. That was the case in September 2016, when Cerberus Capital Management sold off the real estate assets of its portfolio... Read More »

December 2016 Didn’t Deliver a Year-End Boost

The final month of the fourth quarter is typically a busy one for deal makers in all industries. Last year, some health care deal makers apparently got a rest. Deal volume in December 2016 was an anemic 119 transactions, compared with 131 deals in November and 148 in December 2015. The Services sectors accounted for 55% of the deals in December, which is on the low side. Consider that, in November, Services accounted for 69% of the month’s transactions, and even 70% of the total in December 2015. Spending on those deals reached $15.4 billion, a relatively modest amount until it is compared with November’s $8.7 billion total (+78%) and December 2015’s $12.3 billion total (+26%). Suddenly,... Read More »

Good-Bye, ACA. Now What?

And so it begins. A new year, a new administration, and a foreboding that things can and will go wildly out of control in the healthcare industry, as the new administration dismantles the Affordable Care Act and doesn’t bother to replace it. Judging from the market’s behavior since the November 8 election, the notion that a Hillary Clinton victory was “baked in” to every healthcare deal doesn’t hold. Certainly some deals may have been put on hold following Donald Trump’s election, but 2016 ended with 1,536 deals, in our preliminary count. That’s 1% higher than 2015, which was the first year to break 1,500 transactions. Spending on deals in 2016, while not in record territory, was healthy.... Read More »

2016 Delivered on Health Care M and A

As health care mergers and acquisitions go, 2016 lived up to the predictions that M&A activity would stay strong. Preliminary data for year-end totals shows 1,536 announced transactions across 13 healthcare sectors. The total represents a 1% increase in deal volume compared with 2015. (See chart below.) Spending on those deals was significantly lower than the previous year, at least for now. The combined total spending in 2016 now stands at $255.7 billion, down 36% compared with 2015’s $400.3 billion. Nearly $100 billion of that total now hangs in the balance, as two of 2015’s largest deals (Anthem/Cigna and Aetna/Humana) await decisions from a federal judge regarding... Read More »