PricewaterhouseCoopers released its 2013 third quarter healthcare mergers and acquisitions report and there a small uptick over the first two quarters in the number of healthcare deals with 138 total transactions so far. The value of the deals announced is $15.8 billion, up 35 percent over the second quarter, but 2013 is still behind 2012 with volume down 4.6 percent and value down a whopping 25 percent.
For-profit deals were up, continuing the serge from the second quarter, marked by Tenet Healthcare Corporation’s proposed acquisition of Vanguard Health Systems for $4.3 billion, and the third quarter opened with the announcement of Community Health System’s $3.9 billion offer to purchase Health Management Associates (HMA).
Hospital Deals
During Q3 2013, deal volume and value were up when compared to Q3 2012 with the total volume of hospital transactions increased 59 percent from 12 in Q3 2012 to 19 in Q3 2013. Overall deal value increased significantly from $38 million in Q3 2012 to $12.3 billion in Q3 2013. This is largely the result of two $1+ billion transactions in Q3 2013.
The two $1+ billion transactions announced in Q3 2013 were responsible for the significant increase in total deal value.
One of the greatest sources of information that depicts the changes in health IT trends across the industry landscape is from Michael Lake, healthcare technology strategist. Through his monthly reports on the state of health technology, published by his company Circle Square, he provides succinct highlights from throughout the last month. Possibly, what’s best about these reports is that they cover such a diverse segment of the ecosphere.
For example, in one of his most recent reports, the focus was the EHR vendor sphere, cloud EHRs and their importance to independent practices, the use of faxes in hospitals, vendor news and transactions and practice portal insight, among other news.
According to his most recent report, cloud-based EHRs with integrated billing are quickly becoming a key to a practice’s future success as an independent practice. In his report, he cites Black Book as ranking solutions that seamlessly integrate electronic health records (EHR), revenue cycle management (RCM) and practice management (PM). Kareo tops on the list, per KLAS.
However, most practices feel that billing and collections systems and processes need upgrading (87%) and more than 40 percent (42%) are considering an upgrade to RCM software in in the next year . Most practices (71%) are considering a combo of new software and outsourcing services for improvement.
