The Mixed Home-based Care Dealmaking Outlook

When it comes to home-based care dealmaking activity, there is a reason to be cautiously optimistic.
Kris Novak, managing director of The Braff Group, explained that M&A experts are seeing similar volumes to the last couple of years. While some segments of home-based care face significant challenges that can slow dealmaking, others are insulated from some external factors. Overall, an uptick in transaction activity is right around the corner.
“We’re going to start catching up in the second half of the year, and that probably continues with some positive momentum into [20]26 as well,” Novak told Home Health Care News at the recent National Alliance for Care at Home Financial Summit. “We’re certainly cautiously optimistic, and I think, specifically, we see a lot of the activity still in home care. That’s had the largest uptick, and really is driving most of the moderately positive build year-over-year.”
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based The Braff Group is an M&A advisory firm.
Novak noted that, in addition to home care, we can expect to see a number of hospice acquisitions as the year continues.
On the other hand, home health isn’t faring as positively as home care or hospice.
“On the home health side, unfortunately, the proposed payment rule is really going to dampen volume here, for at least a little while, until we get a little bit more certainty,” Novak said. “Until we know [what the final rule includes], it’s really hard to take action in the near-term.”
In June, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its 2026 home health proposed payment rule. The proposal includes a 6.4% aggregate cut to home health payments, which amounts to an estimated $1.135 billion decrease compared to 2025.
The proposed rule isn’t the only reason there’s been a slowdown in home health dealmaking activity.
“We still have a lot of the strategics that have, historically, had a pretty good amount of volume from an acquisition perspective, year-over-year,” Novak said. “They’re just not as active due to internal pressures or other initiatives or priorities that they have right now.”
Still, the broader home-based care space continues to see interest from private equity buyers and investors.
“What we hear from a lot of those private equity groups out there is that there is some variance around which segments they’re interested in and why,” Novak said. “We’re hearing a lot of pure play hospice strategies, given the insulation from a reimbursement perspective. Outside of that, I think it becomes specific strategies around specific populations. We’re seeing home care on the Medicaid side continue to have a high velocity of volume. A lot of that is with private equity-backed strategics.”
Despite PE interest in Medicaid-focused home care companies, Novak and other M&A experts are watching closely to see if there will be any fallout from the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Novak also predicts that we may see PE interest in what are described as more niche segments of home-based care, such as private-duty nursing or pediatrics.
“Private-duty nursing and pediatrics [are areas] they feel have a pretty sticky patient base, longer length of stay, and some form of insulation, whether that be based on the population and how that’s going to tie into areas states may cut under Medicaid, or just knowing that it’d be politically difficult to cut,” he said.
The post The Mixed Home-Based Care Dealmaking Outlook appeared first on Home Health Care News.
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