Bon Secours Mercy Health agrees to buy surgery center chain Surgery Partners for $5.7 billion

On Oct. 26, the Cincinnati-based Catholic nonprofit announced that its affiliate HealthSpan Partners will take Surgery Partners private in a deal valued at $5.7 billion. The companies expect to close in the first quarter of 2027, pending approvals. STAT's Tara Bannow wrote that the deal could make Bon Secours one of the country's biggest ambulatory surgery center operators and would likely raise both its profitability and its leverage over health insurers.

The striking part is how big the target is next to the buyer. Fierce Healthcare's Dave Muoio reported that Surgery Partners brought in $3.31 billion in revenue in 2025, while Bon Secours reported just under $14 billion in total operating revenue for the year. For a system with 47 hospitals, that suggests ambulatory surgery could become a big piece of the business.

A take-private with Bain still at the table

Healthcare Dive's Jacqueline LaPointe described the structure. Bain Capital owns a 39% stake in Surgery Partners, and its affiliates won't sell. They will exchange their shares for equity in HealthSpan Partners. HealthSpan Partners would buy the remaining shares with cash at $23.50 per share, according to Fierce Healthcare. Once the deal closes, Surgery Partners leaves Nasdaq and becomes a private company.

Bain has been a minority owner since 2017, Healthcare Finance News reported, and citing Reuters, the outlet said the firm will retain a major ownership stake after closing. So the private equity firm stays involved even as the public shareholders leave. STAT put it plainly: the deal deepens the health system's ties with Bain. HealthSpan Partners itself is a contractual affiliate and supporting organization of Bon Secours, and Healthcare Dive called it the system's investment arm. The practical result is a Catholic nonprofit taking a majority share of a surgical business alongside a private equity co-owner.

Bain's earlier offer is useful background. It valued the company at about $6.7 billion in enterprise value, according to Fierce Healthcare, and the board turned it down. Bain offered $25.75 per share for the stock it didn't own. HealthSpan's cash price is $23.50 per share.

Surgery Partners CEO Eric Evans still pitched the new deal with conviction. He said he believes the sale is the strongest route ahead for the company, because it gives shareholders an attractive premium paid entirely in cash and brings lasting benefits to patients, physicians and other stakeholders. That pitch runs into some awkward arithmetic: the cash price the company accepted is $2.25 a share below the bid it turned down less than two years ago.

HealthSpan Partners is paying with cash on hand and new debt, and Healthcare Finance News' Susan Morse reported that the debt commitments are already secured. The system has recently added cash. Fierce Healthcare, citing Bon Secours' second-quarter 2026 financial statements, reported that a summer recapitalization of Ensemble Health Partners, the revenue cycle company Bon Secours owns 41% of, brought $670.8 million into the system.

Day-to-day operations are meant to stay the same. Surgery Partners keeps its name, brand, operations and headquarters in Brentwood, Tennessee, and it stays a secular organization while following Bon Secours' Catholic-based core values. Physicians who work at its centers should see the same brand on the door.

What the system is actually buying

Surgery Partners is not a startup roll-up. It has been public since 2015, and a 2017 merger made it the largest standalone, independent surgical facilities operator at the time, according to Fierce Healthcare. That is the same year Bain took its minority position. In 2025 the company reported $0.47 in adjusted earnings per share on its $3.31 billion in revenue.

The clinical mix matters as much as the footprint. Healthcare Dive reported that the deal adds Surgery Partners' capabilities in orthopedic and spinal care, cardiology, gastroenterology and ophthalmology, and said it would cement Bon Secours' outpatient surgery strategy. The companies' release describes "a differentiated model built on partnerships with physicians and health systems, extensive geographic reach and deep clinical expertise."

The target has also been changing its own shape. In recent months Surgery Partners has trimmed some of its acute care holdings, Fierce Healthcare reported. Its leadership said the move would cut the company's Medicaid exposure and leave it better placed as a provider focused only on short-stay surgery. That trimming suggests Bon Secours is buying a business already set up for outpatient work, while the system's 47 hospitals cover the acute side.

Why outpatient surgery is worth the debt

Bon Secours is already large, with more than 1,200 care sites and nearly 60,000 employees. For 2025, Fierce Healthcare reported, the system posted $324 million in recurring operating income, a 2.3% recurring margin, and a $1.1 billion bottom line. When the core business earns operating margins in the low single digits, a separate stream of surgical revenue carries a lot of weight.

Policy explains part of the move. STAT reported that ambulatory surgery centers have become attractive as Medicare payment changes push procedures into outpatient settings and commercial insurers steer members to cheaper sites. Fierce Healthcare added that healthcare executives have bluntly described these ambulatory investments as a "top priority," with many expecting demand to rise as consumers favor lower-cost care settings.

Bon Secours describes the deal from the patient's point of view. In the announcement, Wael Haidar, M.D., the system's president of clinical operations, said patients want high-quality care as more of it shifts out of hospitals.

The buyer is getting a business built around outpatient surgery, and the deal pays off only if surgical volume keeps moving that way. The near-term picture is mixed. Fierce Healthcare has reported that elective surgical volumes have dragged in 2026, even as health system executives say solid demand is still in sight. A debt-financed bet on outpatient surgery is, in effect, a bet that the second half of that sentence wins.

Ascension's Amsurg deal as the yardstick

This is the second very large surgery center deal by a nonprofit health system this year. Earlier in 2026, Ascension paid $3.9 billion for Amsurg, growing its ambulatory surgery center network to about 300, STAT reported. Bannow added that hospital operators, nonprofit and for-profit, have been buying these facilities quickly in recent years.

The Ascension deal also offers a regulatory reference point. It closed after the Federal Trade Commission cleared the purchase, and the FTC required some ambulatory surgery center divestitures, Fierce Healthcare reported. That precedent could matter for how the "pending approvals" on this deal play out in markets where Bon Secours hospitals and Surgery Partners centers overlap.

Capital One's Erik Tellefson told Healthcare Finance News that investment in ambulatory surgery centers has soared, driven by lower costs than hospitals and by the Medicare policy change, which the outlet described as CMS taking most procedures off the inpatient-only list.

Comparing the two deals by facility count is harder than it looks. STAT and Healthcare Dive describe Surgery Partners as more than 200 ambulatory surgery centers, short-stay hospitals, urgent care sites and multispecialty practices. Healthcare Finance News lists 175 ambulatory surgical centers within more than 300 locations. The figures probably count different things, so anyone benchmarking against Ascension's roughly 300 centers should check which unit is being counted.

Insurers will notice first

Commercial payers will likely feel it before patients do. STAT's reading is that the deal strengthens Bon Secours' hand with insurers. For payers and large employers with networks in Surgery Partners' 30 states, the surgery centers' contracts would have a new owner, one that also runs 47 hospitals.

In the announcement, Bon Secours CEO John M. Starcher Jr. described the goal. He said that because healthcare keeps changing, the system needs to grow in ways that let it reach more people in more communities across a wider range of care settings. The first test comes in the first quarter of 2027. After that, watch the first round of insurer renewals covering both Bon Secours hospitals and Surgery Partners centers. Those renewals will show whether the gain in bargaining power that STAT expects actually shows up.