Tenet Healthcare’s move to regain full ownership of Conifer Health Solutions is aimed at lowering the cost to collect and positioning the revenue cycle business to “be more competitive,” CEO Saum Sutaria, M.D., said on the system’s Feb. 11 earnings call.
Tenet announced Feb. 2 that it was regaining full control of Conifer, with Chicago-based CommonSpirit exiting the partnership. Dr. Sutaria said on the call that Tenet had not received cash distributions from the joint venture in the past decade, leading to a buildup of redeemable noncontrolling interest and other liabilities.
“So what we did was we retired $885 million of those obligations on the balance sheet and got back 23.8% of the equity that was in the joint venture for $540 million,” he said. “And then if you look at the remaining six years of the transaction of the contract that got dealt with in the transaction, we received $1.9 billion in accelerated cash flow over three years that would have come over six years in the contract, and the present value of those two things was roughly double what we would have got by running off the contract.”
Tenet has said it will support Conifer’s long-term potential by expanding investments in artificial intelligence, automation and global operating capabilities.
“The objective, of course, is straightforward,” Dr. Sutaria said on a Feb. 2 investor call. “It’s reduction in the cost to collect stepwise over time, which makes the business more competitive from a pricing standpoint. And, secondly, improving the yield and the speed at which you realize that yield, which is really the product that Conifer produces for the marketplace. That’s how we think about it and strategically, our investments are focused across those areas, both with our domestic and global business centers.”
Tenet reported a net income of $1.4 billion in 2025. The for-profit system is projecting net income to range between $2.61 billion and $2.84 billion in 2026.
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