Last week, we confirmed that long-term care M&A activity hit a record in 2022, but what about for the healthcare market as a whole?
Across all other healthcare sectors, from home health and hospitals to physician groups and biotech, our sister site LevinPro HC tracked nearly 2,400 deals in 2022, or 2,392 to be exact at this moment, but we expect that number to creep up in the coming days and weeks. That does not even include the over-500 long-term care deals, and represents an 8% increase over the previous record of 2,214 deals in 2021. For many investors, the long-term demographics, strong governmental support and attractive yields in the healthcare industry are too good to pass up, and more and more companies are looking for a piece of the pie.
Physician groups were the most prolific acquisition targets in 2022, seeing 606 deals, or 33% higher than the 457 transactions in 2021. MOBs also saw a lot of activity, rising 34% from 160 deals in 2021 to 214 in 2022, the most we have ever recorded in the sector. Private equity drove much of the interest (and dollar volume) overall, accounting for 950 transactions in 2022.
The industry is not immune to capital markets issues, however, and fourth quarter deal volume was the lowest of any quarter since Q3:21. So, we may not be breaking any more records in 2023.
