Top 10 Most Valuable Intangible Assets in Healthcare Services

Healthcare services organizations rely on a variety of intangible assets to create business value, including patient and customer relationships, medical records, trade names, assembled workforce, licenses and certifications, non-compete clauses, proprietary technology, software, and others. Market data related to the value of these types of assets are scarce since they’re rarely sold separately, and when they are, the financial terms are seldom disclosed publicly.

One important public source of market data for many of these intangible assets is the valuations prepared for the purposes of creating a post-transaction balance sheet in a business combination (aka a purchase price allocation). This type of analysis involves allocating the purchase consideration from a merger or acquisition to the individual asset categories, including identifiable intangible assets.

We maintain a database of intangible asset valuations from publicly available purchase accounting, including the relative value of each identified intangible asset of the acquired organization.

The following is a list of the top 10 most valuable intangible assets from our database, by industry segment, as a percentage of the business enterprise value. Per FASB, certain intangible assets, such as assembled workforce, are not recognized separately from goodwill in a business combination and therefore have been excluded. Customer and patient relationships are typically not transferable on an individual basis and have also been excluded.

1. ACO/IPA Provider Networks: According to the sample in our database, at the median, over half of the value of an ACO, IPA, or PHO was attributed to its provider network.

2. Hospital-Based Physician Group Facility Contracts: Hospital-based physician groups such as hospitalists, emergency physicians, anesthesiologists, and pathologists derive much of their value from their contracts and relationships with their facility partners.

3. Radiation Oncology Certificates of Need: With only three radiation oncology CONs in our database, the sample size is small, but nearly 40% of the business enterprise value was attributed to the CON in these deals at the median. This is significantly higher than the relative CON values for other segments, such as IRFs, ASCs, or rehabilitation hospitals.

4. Institutional Pharmacy Facility Contracts: Institutional pharmacies that provide pharmaceuticals and consulting services to hospitals and long-term care facilities derive much of their value from their contracts and relationships with their facility partners.

Contact BFMV for assistance in healthcare-related intangible asset valuations.

Updated from original publication 01/03/2019.