The drive toward delivering value-based care provides compelling motivations for healthcare organizations to join forces, creating an active environment of mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships.
This article appears in the January/February 2015 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.
The effect of the push and pull of healthcare reform is manifested in the industry's continuing appetite for consolidation and partnerships. Ultimately, because providing care is very much a provider-patient activity, the infrastructure for care delivery has a local flavor, which means that, compared to other industries, the healthcare industry can be characterized as fragmented. However, the drive toward delivering value-based care provides compelling motivations for healthcare organizations to join forces, creating an active environment of mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships (MAPs).
The top financial objective for such MAP activity is to increase market share within the geography that the organization serves; the choice was selected by 68% of the respondents to the 2015 HealthLeaders Media Mergers, Acquisitions, and Partnerships Survey. In a similar vein, 58% include expanding geographic coverage as an overall financial objective. Both motives have long been principal paths toward acute care revenue growth.
Michael Zeis is a research analyst for HealthLeaders Media.