Revenue cycle management has been one of private equity’s favorite healthcare IT plays, with $42.9 billion in PE deals since 2017, $22.5 billion in exits, and a recently announced $12 billion acquisition of Ensemble Health Partners. The sponsor logic is seductive: layer agentic AI onto the labor-heavy back office, cut offshore staff, and push gross margins from 20% to 30% to a software-like 60% to 70%-plus. But the public markets are flashing a warning. Even Waystar—a high-quality, near-AI-native RCM vendor still growing organic revenue around 11%—is down roughly 43% YTD. PitchBook argues that the automation thesis could be a trap.
Read the full article: AI Kills the RCM Star: PE Should Be Wary of RCM Deals as Agentic AI Guts Take Rates //
Source: https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q2-2026-ai-kills-the-rcm-star-pe-should-be-wary-of-rcm-deals-as-agentic-ai-guts-take-rates