Twenty new hospital merger and acquisition deals were unveiled during the second quarter of 2023, the most since 2018.
Hospital merger and acquisition deal volume has returned to pre-pandemic levels as of the second quarter of 2023, according to a new roundup report.
By Dave Muoio – Jul 17, 2023 – 
Twenty new deals were announced from April to June, up from the 15 of the first quarter and squarely above the 14 announced in the second quarter of 2020 along with the 14 and 13 transactions announced in the second quarters of 2021 and 2022, respectively, healthcare consultancy Kaufman Hall wrote in an analysis released Thursday. The most recent count is in line with the 21 deals tallied by the firm in the second quarter of 2018 and the 19 deals that were inked in the second quarter of 2019.
Deal size, on the other hand, remains elevated compared to the years leading up to the pandemic. Second-quarter average deal size, as measured by the smaller organization’s revenue, was $664 million—down from the second quarter of 2022’s $852 million average but still above every other year dating back at least to 2017, Kaufman Hall wrote.
Similarly, the second quarter’s $13.3 billion in total transacted revenue is below the prior year’s $19.2 billion but above the other second quarters during and leading up to the pandemic, according to the report.
Part of that scale came from three “megamerger” health system deals announced during the most recent quarter: the planned merger of Wisconsin’s Froedtert Health and ThedaCare, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals’ purchase of Geisinger Health for the later launch of new value-based care nonprofit Risant Health and a nonbinding letter of intent for BJC HealthCare and St. Luke’s Health System to form an academic, Missouri-based system.
