Private equity healthcare dealmaking remained steady in 2025
February 13, 2026
Report finds steady deal activity and use of joint ventures with nonprofit health systems
The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) has released the 2025 edition of its annual healthcare acquisitions analysis, providing an overview of private equity dealmaking in the healthcare sector throughout the year. Titled Private Equity Healthcare Deals: 2025 in Review, the report tracks and analyzes private equity-backed healthcare transactions and identifies key trends shaping investment activity across the sector. Healthcare has remained an attractive area for private equity investment due to steady demand, demographic trends, and fragmented markets that lend themselves to consolidation strategies.
In 2025, PESP tracked 1,029 private equity-backed healthcare deals in the United States, consisting of 151 leveraged buyouts, 664 add-on acquisitions, and 214 growth investments, involving 420 platform companies and 708 investment firms. Globally, private equity dealmaking in healthcare saw a resurgence in 2025. In North America, deal volume was essentially even between 2024 and 2025, with dealmaking remaining steady despite a higher interest rate and high tariff environment.
The most active healthcare subsectors tracked by PESP in 2025 included health IT (151 deals), dental care (149 deals), outpatient care (148 deals), medtech (117 deals), and behavioral health (56 deals). Home health and hospice, pharma services, and disability services also remained areas of notable private equity investment activity.
As in prior years, add-on acquisitions accounted for the majority of healthcare deals, reflecting private equity firms’ continued use of consolidation strategies to expand platform companies. In addition to buyouts, add-on acquisitions, and growth investments, private equity firms increasingly relied on joint ventures with nonprofit health systems as a growth strategy, providing access to established brands and geographic markets they might not otherwise readily access. The report identifies Lifepoint Health, a private equity-owned hospital system, as a prominent example of this strategy, noting that as of January 2026 at least 70 joint ventures with over 30 different nonprofit partners operated under joint venture arrangements.
The report highlights ongoing concerns related to private equity ownership in healthcare, including the use of consolidation strategies such as “stealth consolidation” that may contribute to higher prices, as well as reliance on debt financing that can increase financial risk for healthcare providers.
In light of continued investor interest in healthcare and the risks associated with private equity ownership of healthcare companies, the report concludes that state and federal policymakers should update laws and regulations to strengthen oversight of healthcare mergers and acquisitions, including transactions that fall below federal reporting thresholds.
The full report is available at: pestakeholder.org/reports/pe-
