John Palusci, Former Vice President of Transformation and Strategic Finance, BAYADA

In this episode of M&A Science, John Palusci, former Vice President of Transformation and Strategic Finance at BAYADA, joins Kison Patel to discuss how to build a repeatable, Buyer-Led M&A™ engine within a nonprofit structure. John walks through his journey from IT to finance to corporate development, detailing how he helped scale BAYADA's deal strategy with a focus on long-term value, integration-led diligence, and mission alignment. He shares real lessons from joint ventures, cashless acquisitions, and how to avoid surprises in highly regulated industries like healthcare.

Things you will learn:

• How to structure healthcare M&A for long-term mission alignment
  
  

• What a "conceptual pro forma" is and why it accelerates early deal screening
  
  

• How to manage integration risk in people-first, regulation-heavy industries

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Episode Chapters

[00:01:00 ] John's unconventional path from IT to M&A leadership

[00:05:00 ] Running joint ventures with hospital systems

[00:07:30 ] Third-party valuation in nonprofit deals

[00:10:00 ] How BAYADA sourced and filtered deals

[00:13:00 ] Key reasons to kill a healthcare deal early

[00:16:00 ] How BAYADA transitioned from for-profit to nonprofit

[00:22:30 ] Standardizing diligence with a conceptual pro forma

[00:27:00 ] Managing talent transitions in home healthcare

[00:34:00 ] Cashless deals: how they work and when they're possible

[00:38:30 ] Integration-led diligence and DealRoom's role in execution

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