Healthscope owners contributed to its corporate heart attack [Video]

To say the collapse of private hospital giant Healthscope was an accident waiting to happen feels like a statement of the bleeding obvious. For Canadian private equity player Brookfield, which paid $4.4 billion for the company in 2019, it was an embarrassing and costly commercial misjudgment.

With Healthscope placed in administration this week, the process of selling individual hospitals or groups of them has begun. Up to 10 buyers, including Macquarie Group, St Vincent’s and Calvary and a slew of non-profit operators, are reportedly looking to cherry-pick from the portfolio of 37 hospitals and treatment centres.

Bank funding has been put in place to keep the hospitals open for a period. But the long-term survival of all of them is not assured.

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