Radha Savitala has worked with more than 45 acute care hospitals, medical groups and surgery centers as a healthcare attorney to navigate financing transactions.
Now, she is the co-founder of Tenor Health Foundation, an organization with a mission to rebuild financially distressed hospitals through a community-first, nonprofit model that moves away from top-down expansion and debt-heavy deals. Tenor Health recently acquired a hospital formerly owned by Steward Health Care and plans to acquire three more hospitals in Pennsylvania from Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems as it looks to offload financially distressed facilities.
Ms. Savitala recently joined the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” to discuss the move away from traditional acquisition models and how her strategy with Tenor will reshape hospital acquisitions moving forward.
Here are three takeaways from Ms. Savitala’s discussion with Becker’s:
1. Today’s market demands adaptability. “The traditional notion of simply putting ots on a map and acquiring hospitals doesn’t make sense anymore,” Ms. Savitala said. She added that there is a need to operate on a “multifaceted level,” and that the current market requires collaboration with local municipalities, state legislatures and foundations.
2. Pennsylvania has become ground zero for hospital closures. The state leads the country in hospital closures in 2025. Of the 22 hospital closures Becker’s has reported on in 2025, four were in Pennsylvania. According to Ms. Savitala, there are several reasons for this:
“First, the state has a higher number of hospitals than many others — that’s a big factor,” she said. “Second, if you look back at the acquisitions that happened about 10 to 15 years ago, we’ve seen that some systems likely overpaid. Once they hit their expected rate of return, we started to see a wave of divestitures and exits.”
Medicaid presents another issue, as reimbursements for acute care in Pennsylvania are not “strong,” Ms. Savitala said. While the state does reimburse relatively well for behavioral health, “Medicaid alone can’t sustain these hospitals,” she added. She noted that this is why it’s vital to look at patient mix and ensure that contract negotiations support the goal of staying local.
“You also have to assess which service lines are truly sustainable for the community,” she said. “A strong local healthcare market is essential. When you have that market share, you’re more likely to achieve economies of scale and negotiate more favorable managed care agreements to help offset low Medicaid rates. Ultimately, you need hands-on leadership that understands both the health of the hospital and the broader needs of the community.”
3. Response to recent federal policy shifts. President Donald Trump recently revoked an executive order on competition, with the rollback expected to reduce red tape and scrutiny surrounding healthcare mergers and acquisitions.
Ms. Savitala posits that regulators will still be mindful of competition, given that the FTC still monitored and cracked down on some deals during the first Trump administration. Furthermore, the rollback could contribute to what Ms. Savitala identified a harmful trend of healthcare systems becoming highly powerful and concentrated in a specific area, which has led to higher costs and diminished care quality, among other concerns.
“That’s why communities really need to advocate for themselves. They should be saying, ‘Hey, we need two hospitals. We need competition,'” she said. “Because at the end of the day, no patient wants to be funneled into a large tertiary academic medical center with long wait times and months-long delays for primary care appointments. It just doesn’t work for them anymore. I think communities are going to stay very alert, especially when it comes to service reductions in their region.”
