Gary W. Herschman, Anjana D. Patel, and Zachary S. Taylor, attorneys in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Newark office, co-authored an article in Bloomberg Health Law & Business News, titled “Health IT, Software Deals Lead Industry Moves So Far in 2021.” The piece was also co-authored by Hector M. Torres, Managing Director at FocalPoint LLC, and Larry Kocot, Principal at KPMG LLP, and Carole Streicher, Partner at KPMG LLP.
Following is an excerpt:
The volume of announced and closed health-care industry deals through the first half of 2021 (1,444) are up 73% over the same period last year (830). Similarly, the number of deals in June (283) and Q2 (721) both exceeded previous recorded volumes. At this current pace, deal volume for the 2021 calendar year is expected to exceed 3,000, which would surpass the volume for any other year on record.
With the economy continuing to grow, we anticipate that investment activity will continue at a similar pace. However, the recent surge in Covid-19 cases, driven by the Delta variant, could create some headwinds, and congressional action on various initiatives, such as prescription drug price controls, could impact certain sectors of the health-care industry.
Health-Care IT and Software
Health-care IT and software deals led all sectors with 50 announced or closed deals in June, the most of any month this year, and 225 transactions in the first half of 2021.
Although utilization of telehealth has been slowly declining for the past couple of months as patients return to traditional care settings, overall demand for innovative health IT remains higher than pre-pandemic levels as patients and providers continue to seek options to have care delivered in virtual environments or other contactless ways.
Some of this has been driven by the realization that there is “no going” back in some ways to the pre-Covid days in light of the possibility of more Covid cases from variants and other potential future pandemics, all of which have highlighted the need for providers and patients to be facile with the utilization of health IT products and platforms.