An AI first pass on every broker teaser.
Deal screening automation is a build engagement: a daily digest that reads your incoming broker flow, screens each deal against your buy-box, and returns a pass or pursue recommendation with the reasoning written out. Calibrated by a healthcare M&A practitioner, run in your environment, owned by you.
Broker flow is a full-time job nobody was hired for.
The corp dev teams we talk to see 30 or more broker emails a week: teasers, blind profiles, one-pagers, and the occasional full CIM. Published PE funnel math runs roughly 100 deals reviewed for every one or two closed, and Axial alone puts 10,000+ deals to market a year, before a single direct broker relationship is counted. A first-pass screen runs 30 to 60 minutes of analyst time per deal. At 30 teasers a week, that is a part-time job before the real work starts.
So the flow gets triaged by whoever has a spare hour, against criteria that live in three people's heads, and the record of why a deal was passed lives nowhere. The cost shows up two ways: the deal that fit the buy-box but got read four days late, and the coverage problem getting worse - SPS by With Intelligence found the median PE firm saw just 17.6% of its target-market deal flow in 2024.
Hiring another analyst scales the cost with the volume. The alternative is an automation that gives every teaser the same first pass, every morning, against the same written criteria. And when a deal survives that pass, pre-LOI deal intelligence takes it deep before the LOI goes out: every teaser gets the first pass, one deal at a time gets the workup.
A screening system your team owns.
Built and calibrated by Healthcare M&AI, then handed over with documentation. It runs in your environment, on your accounts, and the retainer is never required to keep it running.
Daily deal digest
Every new teaser summarized, scored, and ranked in one email or dashboard entry, ready before the morning standup.
Buy-box screening engine
Your criteria, encoded: size thresholds, geography, payer mix, provider count, specialty, ownership profile, and the deal-breakers unique to your thesis.
Pass or pursue, with reasoning
Every deal gets a recommendation and the why, written out. Your team agrees or overrules in seconds instead of reading from scratch.
Healthcare calibration layer
Sub-sector logic a generic tool does not have: payer concentration, provider dependence, 340B exposure, DSO provider-continuity walk-aways. Calibrated by an operator who has screened this flow from the corp dev seat.
Searchable deal log
A record of every deal seen, every call made, and every reason why - so passed deals resurface when the thesis changes instead of vanishing into the inbox.
Client-owned system
Runs in your tenant on your API keys. Full documentation and training at handover. Your data stays in your systems and nothing is pooled across clients.
Calibration reviews
Optional retainer after handover: criteria tuned as the thesis moves, new broker formats added, and pass/pursue quality reviewed against your team's actual decisions.
Four steps from inbox chaos to a calibrated first pass.
- 1. Buy-box intake. We codify how your team actually screens, including the unwritten criteria: the payer mix that makes you walk, the provider count that makes a practice too small, the markets you will never enter.
- 2. Build. A client-controlled forwarding alias routes your broker flow into the system. Parsing, screening model, digest, and deal log are built inside your environment, on enterprise API endpoints with no-training terms.
- 3. Calibration. The system runs parallel to your manual screen for two to four weeks and is tuned against your team's real calls. It will make wrong calls during tuning; that is what the calibration period is for.
- 4. Handover. Documentation, training, and the keys. You own it. An optional calibration retainer keeps a practitioner reviewing the system's judgment as your thesis moves.
The automation recommends, your team decides. Every recommendation ships with its reasoning precisely so a human can overrule it, and borderline deals route to a needs-review lane rather than a forced call.
A build you own versus the alternatives.
| Comparison criteria | Deal CRM | Screening SaaS | Another analyst | This build |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads every teaser | No, captures and organizes | Yes, if your team configures it | Yes, at 30-60 minutes each | Yes, every morning |
| Renders a recommendation | No | Generic scoring | Yes | Yes, with written reasoning |
| Healthcare-calibrated | No | No | Depends on the hire | Yes, by a practitioner |
| You own it | Rented | Rented | Salaried | Owned outright |
| Data stays in your systems | Vendor cloud | Vendor cloud | Yes | Yes, your tenant and keys |
| Cost shape | Subscription forever | Subscription forever | Salary plus ramp | One-time build, optional retainer |
One deal, one call, reasoning included.
Illustrative example. Composite for demonstration; details do not describe a real practice or client engagement.
Teaser received 7:42 am from a regional broker. Estimated $6.8M revenue against a $5M floor. General dentistry with 60/40 PPO-to-FFS mix, inside the payer criteria. Four locations within a 40-mile radius in a state on the target list. Two associates plus the selling doctor, who states a 2-year transition willingness. Reasoning: fits size, geography, and payer criteria; provider dependence moderate; lease terms are the diligence question, routed to the deal log with a pursue recommendation for human review.
Built for the teams drowning in the flow.
PE-backed healthcare platforms
DSO, MSO, home health, and other add-on machines with one-to-three-person corp dev teams and a full broker inbox.
Corporate development at strategics
Programmatic acquirers who need every teaser screened the same way, with a record of every pass.
Private equity funds
Platform teams standardizing first-pass screening across portfolio companies instead of three companies screening three ways.
Independent sponsors
Heavy Axial and broker flow, no analyst bench. The first pass runs before your day starts.
Built in weeks, tuned in parallel.
The build runs in weeks, with the exact timeline scoped on the discovery call by deal-flow volume, broker source count, and whether full-CIM screening is in scope. The calibration period runs two to four weeks alongside your manual screen before handover.
Fixed build fee. You keep the system.
Fixed project fee scoped by flow volume and scope. Standard structure: 50% deposit to kick off work, 50% net 30 on delivery, with an optional monthly calibration retainer after handover. Healthcare M&AI does not use success fees, contingency compensation, or transaction-based pricing. All engagements are advisory.
Common questions about deal screening automation.
Does this require access to our email inboxes?
No. The system reads the deal flow you forward it, through a client-controlled forwarding rule or a dedicated deal-flow alias such as deals@yourcompany.com. Healthcare M&AI never holds credentials to your mailboxes, and your IT team controls what reaches the system.
How does the screening handle confidential CIMs and broker NDAs?
Carefully, and under your policy. Deal NDAs increasingly restrict putting confidential material into AI systems that retain or train on data, so the build runs on enterprise API endpoints with no-training terms, inside your own accounts. The default scope screens teasers and blind profiles; full NDA-covered CIMs enter the pipeline only under a configuration your counsel or compliance team has approved.
What does the automation decide, and what stays with our team?
The automation recommends, your team decides. Every deal gets a pass or pursue recommendation with the reasoning written out so a human can agree or overrule it in seconds, and borderline deals are routed to a needs-review lane instead of being forced into a binary call.
How is the buy-box calibrated, and what happens when our criteria change?
The build starts with a buy-box intake that codifies how your team actually screens: size, geography, payer mix, provider concentration, specialty, and the unwritten walk-aways. The system then runs parallel to your manual screen for two to four weeks and is tuned against your team's real calls. When your thesis moves, the criteria are updated, either by your team using the handover documentation or through an optional calibration retainer.
Where does the system run, and who owns it after the build?
It runs in your environment, on your accounts and API keys, and you own it outright. Healthcare M&AI hands over documentation and training at the end of the build and does not retain your deal documents after the engagement. Nothing is pooled or reused across clients.
How is this different from a deal CRM like Affinity or DealCloud, or a screening platform?
Deal CRMs capture and organize your pipeline; they do not read a teaser and argue a recommendation. Generalist screening platforms leave the configuration and tuning to your team and know nothing about healthcare. This is a bespoke build: calibrated to your buy-box by a healthcare M&A practitioner, run in your environment, and owned by you instead of rented.
Which healthcare sub-sectors can the screening be calibrated to?
Any healthcare services vertical with broker-intermediated deal flow: dental and DSO, physician practices and MSOs, behavioral health, home health and hospice, post-acute, urgent care, and ancillary services. The calibration layer encodes sub-sector logic such as payer concentration, provider dependence, and the walk-aways specific to your vertical.
How long does a build take and how is it priced?
Builds run in weeks, with the exact timeline scoped on the discovery call based on deal-flow volume, broker source count, and whether full-CIM screening is in scope. Pricing is a fixed build fee, 50% deposit to kick off and 50% net 30 on delivery, with an optional monthly calibration retainer after handover. No success fees, no contingency, no transaction-based pricing, and the retainer is never required to keep the system running.
Put a first pass on every teaser.
Tell us your sub-sector, your weekly flow volume, and how screening works today. We will scope the build on a 25-minute discovery call.