Ascension Buying AmSurg in Response to Outpatient Trend
The leaders of nonprofit health system Ascension have signed a deal to buy AmSurg Corp., a move that will bolt more than 250 surgery centers in 34 states to their portfolio of nearly 100 owned or consolidated hospitals as well as 27 in which it is a partner.
“The shift from inpatient to outpatient care is accelerating nationwide. By investing in AmSurg’s strong ASC network, we are proactively responding to this transformation,” Eduardo Conrado, president of St. Louis-based Ascension, said in a June 17 statement. “We are investing in a platform to support independent physician groups and health care systems alike, and, most crucially, we are ensuring that patients have access to the care they need in convenient, trusted and community-based environments.”
Terms of Ascension’s planned purchase aren’t being made public but Bloomberg reported early this year that talks were moving forward using a $3.9 billion valuation. Word of Ascension’s deal comes 25 months after the leaders of AmSurg’s former parent company, Envision Healthcare Corp., filed for Chapter 11 protection and said they would separate the operations of AmSurg from those of Envision Physician Services. That transaction was completed in late 2023.
Ascension has operations in 16 states as well as the District of Columbia and employs about 99,000 people. (See the map at right, with AmSurg's footprint depicted below it.) In addition to its hospitals, it also owns 30 senior-living facilities. The organization’s leaders this spring announced plans to divest their operations in southwest Michigan to Beacon Health System.
The Ascension acquisition news was made public 75 minutes after Surgery Partners Inc., one of AmSurg’s peers, said its board of directors has ended talks with private-equity giant Bain Capital about the latter acquiring the roughly 60 percent of Surgery Partners shares it doesn’t already own.
Leaders of Bain and Surgery Partners, which like AmSurg is headquartered in Nashville, had been in formal talks since late January, when Bain had submitted a non-binding bid to pay $25.75 per Surgery Partners share. In a statement, Brent Turner—the director who chaired the independent committee that assessed the Bain proposal—said the group concluded that going it alone as a public company is “the best path forward.”
Bain’s offer in January came when Surgery Partners’ stock (Ticker: SGRY) was changing hands around $20.50. On June 17, the stock fell more than 12 percent to close at $20.33. At that level, Surgery Partners’ market capitalization is about $2.6 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post for more than a decade and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.