Hospitals are a safe bet, so they tend to take on a lot of debt. Because the industry is stable, they can safely increase returns to shareholders by funding themselves with borrowed money.  The Irish private hospitals are no exception. When I looked across the industry in 2020, I found the average net debt to ebitda of St Vincents, Bon Secours, The Blackrock Clinic and the Hermitage was 5.4. In other words, those hospitals’ net debt (ie, debt minus excess cash) is 5.4 times the profits used to service them. At 9.9 times Ebitda, the Beacon’s debt burden stood out…

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