“Private equity firms remain the dominant force in the market, building regional and national platforms, but health systems are making significant moves to maintain their market presence. The competition from these two groups of buyers will keep activity high throughout 2022.”
NEW CANAAN, Ct. (PRWEB) January 13, 2022
The physician medical group M&A market soared in the fourth and final quarter of 2021, with 137 publicly announced transactions, compared with 96 acquisitions in the third quarter of 2021, based on new acquisition data from LevinPro HC. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, which only saw 62 deals, this quarter was exceptionally busy for the Physician Medical Group sector, based on data from the LevinPro HC Database, which can be accessed here.
Transactions in the Physician Medical Group sector typically do not have a disclosed price, but there were still notable deals. Last quarter there was more than $2.9 billion in announced spending, whereas in Q3:21 there was just $400 million in transaction value. The largest deal by disclosed price was the acquisition of SurgCenter Development (SCD) by Tenet Healthcare Corporation and United Surgical Partners International for $1.2 billion. SCD partners with local surgeons to create physician-owned and physician-operated ambulatory surgical centers. There were 92 ASCs included in this deal.
Although the ophthalmology/optometry subsector had the most activity this quarter, with a combined total of 29 deals, private equity investors were primarily focused on dental groups and practices. Private equity and their portfolio companies were involved in 11 of the 23 dental acquisitions in the fourth quarter. Dental physician groups also dominated the private equity market in Q3:21, indicating that this trend isn’t just a fad.
“It’s difficult to overstate how active the physician M&A market was in 2021, where we saw a record-breaking volume of deal announcements,” said Dylan Sammut, Editor of Healthcare at Irving Levin Associates, which publishes the data on its Levin Pro HC platform. “Private equity firms remain the dominant force in the market, building regional and national platforms, but health systems are making significant moves to maintain their market presence. The competition from these two groups of buyers will keep activity high throughout 2022.”
All quarterly results are published in The Health Care M&A Report for all 12 sectors of health care, which is part of the LevinPro HC investment research source. For information, or to order the report, call 800-248-1668. Irving Levin Associates is celebrating more than 70 years of delivering exclusive M&A intelligence to its sophisticated audience of seniors housing and healthcare investors. The company was established in 1948 and has headquarters in New Canaan, Connecticut. The company publishes research reports and newsletters and maintains databases on the healthcare and seniors housing M&A markets.