In light of continued investor interest in healthcare and therisks associated with private equity ownership of healthcare companies, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project is tracking private equity-backed healthcare acquisitions. Below is a list of private equity healthcare buyouts, growth investments, and add-on acquisitions completed during April 2026. We will continue to track acquisitions on a monthly basis.
See March 2026 acquisitions here.
In April we tracked 16 buyouts, 40 add-on acquisitions, and 24 growth/expansion investments.
Private equity continued its investment in urgent care through multiple acquisitions in April
In April, private equity-owned ExperCare Urgent Care acquired After Hours Clinic, expanding the company’s urgent care offerings across Northern Alabama.
Urgent care is loosely defined as “care for an illness, injury or condition serious enough that a reasonable person would seek care right away, but not so severe it requires emergency room care.” Urgent care centers purportedly treat almost any non-life-threatening medical issue quickly and at a fraction of the cost of a hospital emergency room.
Urgent care centers’ main draw is convenience: they do not require appointments and are typically open late and on weekends. This is especially beneficial for patients who do shift work or do not have paid time off. Patients typically experience shorter wait times than in hospital emergency rooms and can receive care for injuries and illnesses that fall below the level of “life-threatening,” allowing for additional flexibility.
The convenience and lower costs associated with urgent care centers may be part of what has fueled expansion in the sector. A 2023 Urgent Care Association industry whitepaper noted that the number of urgent care centers in the US nearly doubled in nine years, from over 7,000 in 2014 to over 14,000 in 2023.
Some industry expansion can also be attributed to private equity investment. Private equity began investing in urgent care centers in 2007, though the Journal of Urgent Care Medicinenoted that investment picked up “with the 2010 acquisitions and scaling of NextCare, MedExpress, and FastMed.” As of March 2024, more than 2,300 US urgent care centers, or about 17%, were backed by private equity.
Private equity investment in urgent care centers could represent a risk to patients, as outlined in PESP’s 2022 report on private equity’s investments in urgent care. As the report describes, urgent care companies operate in a lax regulatory environment, allowing them to escape the level of scrutiny paid to hospitals and other healthcare providers. Additionally, urgent care centers are reportedly less likely to treat patients on Medicaid. And finally, federal legislation banning surprise medical billing largely does not cover urgent care, meaning patients are not protected from surprise bills at urgent care facilities.
Hospice and home health saw several private equity investments
We tracked four transactions related to hospice, home health, and home care in April. PESP considers home health, home care, and hospice as separate categories for the purposes of classifying companies, but groups these categories together for the purpose of analyzing health industry trends.
For-profit home healthcare and hospice companies have been linked to lower standards of care compared to their non-profit counterparts. Private equity firms, which often target outsized returns over short time horizons and finance many of their acquisitions with high levels of debt, may exacerbate that divide. PESP released a report in 2022 about private equity’s investments in the home healthcare and hospice industries. That report surveyed controversies involving for-profit home healthcare and hospice companies, including underpaid and overworked employees (who are mostly women of color), Medicare fraud, and lower quality of care compared to their non-profit counterparts.
Blue Owl Capital announced a definitive merger agreement with Sila Realty Trust for $2.4 billion
On April 20, 2026, healthcare-focused real estate investment trust Sila Realty Trust and alternative investment asset manager Blue Owl Capital announced that the companies had entered into a definitive merger agreement in which affiliates of Blue Owl Real Estate Capital will acquire all outstanding shares of Sila’s common stock in an all-cash transaction for about $2.4 billion.
As of the end of March, Sila owned 137 real estate properties across 29 states, including 86 medical outpatient buildings, 25 inpatient rehabilitation facilities, and 26 surgical and specialty facilities.
Sila Chief Executive Michael Seton described Blue Owl as “the leading global investor in net lease assets and sale-leasebacks.” Sale-leaseback transactions involve a company or organization, such as a hospital, selling its real estate to a third party, often a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back. Sale-leasebacks are popular with private equity firms because they generate a short-term cash payout that can be used to pay a cash dividend to the private equity owner. The hospital, however, is then responsible for paying rent in perpetuity.