Dive Brief:
- For-profit hospital chain HCA Healthcare’s Houston affiliate announced last week it completed its acquisition of 11 free-standing emergency departments from SignatureCare Emergency Centers.
- HCA Houston Healthcare, which operates a network of 13 hospitals and nine outpatient surgery centers, now has 26 free-standing emergency departments in the area in addition to hospital-based emergency rooms, according to a Friday press release.
- The SignatureCare centers will be re-branded to HCA Houston ER 24/7. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Dive Insight:
The acquisitions comes as HCA is doubling down on investments in emergency services, part of a multi-year strategy to capture market share and become the dominant care provider in all of its markets.
In its first investor day in two decades, HCA leadership announced last month that it was investing billions of dollars in emergency services and high acuity service lines in order to capture 29% of the healthcare services market by the end of the decade. Currently, HCA’s market share sits around 27%.
Investment in emergency room care can drive inpatient admissions and surgeries — important revenue for hospital systems.
Executives at the Nashville, Tennessee-based hospital operator said the chain added over 100 freestanding emergency departments in the last decade, and had over 50 additional facilities under development at the beginning of November. Earlier this year, HCA announced it would acquire 41 urgent care centers in Texas.
Texas is one of HCA’s largest markets. The 184-hospital system had 46 hospitals in the state as of June 30, according to a fact sheet provided by the operator.
HCA missed Wall Street expectations on earnings per share during its most recent earnings after reporting results that were weighed down by losses from its joint venture with physician staffing firm Valesco. HCA downwardly revised its upper-bound revenue expectations for the year as its expenses increased year over year.
