Tenet Healthcare has announced it is looking to sell its Conifer unit, a revenue cycle management company.
Tenet said it has hired Goldman Sachs to help advise it on a sale price for Conifer, which manages debt collection processes for nearly 800 hospitals across the country, including the 77 owned and operated by Tenet.
Conifer provides the majority of Tenet’s revenue, but the healthcare company is overladen with debt and its major shareholders have been lobbying for big changes to be made at the company. Tenet is carrying $15 billion in debt, according to a published report.
Conifer employs nearly 16,000 people and has annual revenues of nearly $1 billion. The price tag for Conifer is expected to be about $2.5 billion, according to a published report. A decision on any sale will be made during the first half of 2018, the company announced on Tuesday.
Despite the lofty numbers, sales and growth at the company have lagged through much of 2017, according to a published report.
Tenet and Conifer were both in the news earlier this week, thanks to a feature in BloombergBusinessWeek, which highlighted how the collections and revenue cycle management unit were contributing heavily to the company’s bottom line.