Home-based care M&A craters 41% in Q2 2026 as fraud crackdown bites
Plus: CY2027 home health rule hides a temporary 3% PDGM clawback behind a 2.4% raise. The day's rules, money, and enforcement, sourced and tiered below.
Plus: CY2027 home health rule hides a temporary 3% PDGM clawback behind a 2.4% raise. The day's rules, money, and enforcement, sourced and tiered below.
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American Health Intel
Rules · Money · Medicine · Decoded daily
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| The Service Line |
Friday, July 24, 2026 |
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Home-based care M&A craters 41% in Q2 2026 as fraud crackdown bites
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Plus: CY2027 home health rule hides a temporary 3% PDGM clawback behind a 2.4% raise. The day's rules, money, and enforcement, sourced and tiered below.
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Report Confidence: High
Home health and hospice mergers, the deals where companies buy or combine with each other, cratered in Q2 2026: just 16 closed, down 41% from Q1's 27 and 45% from a year earlier.
Deal advisory firm Mertz Taggart blames the fraud takedowns, the hospice 36-month ownership rule, and the new Medicare enrollment moratorium for making deals harder to close.
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Why it matters
Fewer deals closing means less consolidation and slower change in who owns your local home health or hospice agency right now.
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Rule Confidence: High
The home health payment agency CMS proposed a 2027 pay rule that raises rates 2.4% on paper, but buries a temporary 3% clawback for what it calls billions in past overpayments.
CMS wants to recoup an estimated $4.9 billion in cumulative overpayments from CY2020-2025, but for the first time since CY2022 it dropped the permanent behavioral pay cut. Comments due Aug 31, 2026.
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Why it matters
Watch whether the temporary 3% clawback survives to the final rule, since it would offset most of the headline payment increase for home health agencies.
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Also today
CMS commits to 60 days notice before extending hospice/home health enrollment freeze Read
General Atlantic, Kinderhook, and Deacon Associates lead Q2's biggest home-based care deals Read
Hospices get FY2027 payment-penalty letters over 2025 HOPE tool compliance Read
19.1%: the national hospice live-discharge rate operators should be tracking Read
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