Healthcare M&A: Trends & Outlook

The Middle Market Investment Banking Association (MMIBA) and the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA) today announced that a new research report from the McLean Group entitled Healthcare M&A: Trends & Outlook is now available for download on the MMIBA site.  
 
“Healthcare is the largest US industry, employing more than 15 million people, and it remains the fastest growing,” said Parnell Black, NACVA CEO and co-founder.  “Today, fundamental demand in healthcare is being driven by strong trends that include an aging population, advances in medical technology, and increased access to healthcare—and that demand in turn has opened up significant opportunity for the mergers and acquisition professional.”  
 
Healthcare M&A: Trends & Outlook is authored by Enrique C. Brito, CFA, AVA, CM&A, CMAP, a McLean Senior Managing Director who also serves as McLean’s Healthcare Practice Lead.   The research report lays the groundwork for its assessment of the current M&A environment by first discussing the significance and effect of trends in healthcare services and technology.   Salient trends in healthcare services today include cost containment, a projected shortage of primary care physicians, growing interest in alternative medicine, and the cost and effects of malpractice insurance.  Important trends in healthcare technology include industry-wide implementation of medical health records, the growing integration of telecommunication technologies in healthcare delivery, increased consumer openness to Internet and remote consultation and monitoring, and unprecedented opportunities in medical device research.
 
Merger and acquisition opportunities in the healthcare field, the report finds, will largely be driven in the near terms by patent expirations (as pharmaceutical companies search for new innovation and snap up biotech firms to fill their product pipelines), technology interoperability requirements (as settled standards more easily enable proprietary medical systems to communicate with each other), and vertical consolidation (as hospitals continue to merge and buy up physician practices, HMOs sell off physician operations, and pharmaceutical companies  move from a product- to services-reoriented business model in order to best position themselves for an environment dominated by managed care).
 
Download the research today.