Dive Brief:
- According to research by Irving Levin Associates, merger and acquisition deal volume fell 21.5% year-over-year, to 84 acquisitions in 2013, Becker's Hospital Review reports.
- In another report released last month, Irving Levin Associates found that hospital merger and acquisition volume fell 42.9% year-over-year to 12 deals in the first quarter of 2014.
- However, the number of hospitals and hospital beds involved in transactions is at a five-year high, driven by the merger of Community Health Systems and Health Management Associates, and Tenet Healthcare Corp. and Vanguard Health Systems.
Dive Insight:
It's very interesting to see that the pace of hospital mergers and acquisitions seems to have slowed down last year, aside from the two big mergers reported on above. Perhaps hospitals are hoping tight affiliations in organizations like ACOs will boost their resources sufficiently to help them ride out the coming challenges in the industry. Regardless, anecdotal evidence suggests that hospitals are still quite interested in M&A, so perhaps deal flow will rebound this year.