Industry consolidation requires new business evaluation skills, new discipline, and new expertise to find the strategic fit that will see healthcare organizations into the future.
M&A in the hospital and health system business used to be relatively simple: big hospital or system buys smaller hospital or system. But in 2015, as organizations nationwide try to navigate the vast geographic differences in the pace and nature of healthcare reform, their solutions are equally myriad. Some consolidation activity is in the traditional vein of direct acquisition or merger of equals, but many new partnerships involve the creation of new entities to tie systems together, whether geographically or otherwise.
Hospitals and health systems, recognizing the growing importance of care coordination and the value in unified patient management and tracking, are acquiring organizations once thought far outside their purview, such as imaging centers, surgery centers, primary care practices, and even LTAC, skilled nursing, or home health groups. Further, some hospitals are partnering in everything short of assets through ACOs or other patient- and cost-management structures.
This trend is remaking healthcare organizations and requires new business evaluation skills, new discipline, and new expertise to find the strategic fit that will see them into the future.
Philip Betbeze is the senior leadership editor at HealthLeaders.