In the first quarter, Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare sold nine hospitals while its outpatient business United Surgical International Partners acquired 45 ambulatory surgery centers and added 32 service lines.
Tenet has increased the number of ASCs in its portfolio to 512 and decreased the number of hospitals it operates to 49, highlighting the company's expectation that its ASC business will drive long-term growth as care continues to shift from inpatient to outpatient settings.
Tenet posted a net income of $2.2 billion in the first quarter — up from $143 million in the same period last year — and aims to spend about $250 million a year on ASC mergers and acquisitions.
"We have had an outstanding start to the year highlighted by strong growth in revenues, admissions and profitability," CEO Saum Sutaria, MD, said. "Our operational excellence and focus on continuous improvement helped enable our momentum as we transform our company through strategic portfolio decisions, disciplined capital allocation and debt reduction."
Tenet is also continuing to build new ASCs through its USPI development team and Towson, Md,-based SurgCenter Development, which it acquired for about $1.2 billion in 2021. Around the same time, Tenet sold five Florida hospitals to Dallas-based Steward Health Care for $1.1 billion.
While Tenet is a legacy hospital operator, its long-term strategy revolves around the expansion of its ASC business as regulatory and reimbursement changes, new technology, and payer and patient preferences continue to accelerate the shift of certain procedures away from hospitals toward outpatient settings.