Conifer Health Solutions, the revenue cycle business of for-profit Tenet Healthcare, plans to permanently lay off 1,037 employees as a result of its breakup with CommonSpirit Health, according to a mandatory notice filing with the Texas Workforce Commission.
The layoffs are set to begin on Nov. 2, according to the WARN filing, and involve workers who report to Tenet’s corporate headquarters in Dallas. Affected workers are not represented by a union and do not have any bumping rights.
"Conifer is taking this action due to restructuring and technology initiatives related to, among other things, no longer providing services to CommonSpirit Health after October 30, 2026," the notice reads.
Tenet and Conifer did not immediately respond to Fierce Healthcare’s requests for comment.
Tenet and CommonSpirit, which owned a 23.2% equity stake in Conifer, announced the end of their arrangement back in February. The pair had a long-term contract in which CommonSpirit outsourced its revenue cycle services to Conifer through 2032. To terminate the contract early, the major nonprofit system agreed to $1.9 billion in payments spread over three years, while also selling its equity in Conifer to Tenet for $540 million.
Tenet’s CEO Saum Sutaria, M.D., in February described the arrangement as a “highly accretive asset sale [that] happened to be a contract rather than what we’ve done in the past, which are hospitals.” He told analysts and investors that the company sees “opportunities to leverage Conifer's scale to advance offshoring automation and apply AI to drive greater efficiencies and enhance capabilities to better serve clients.”
More recently, during a fireside chat at this week’s Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference, Sutaria described Conifer as undergoing “a transition year,” and that “there may be a P[rofit] and L[oss] drag in the short term, but we’re still incredibly pleased with the transaction and the yield for Tenant on the transaction.”
Though he didn’t directly reference any layoffs, Sutaria said Tenet is preparing to pivot Conifer to new business opportunities. Conifer, he said, has “already started doing a set of things that help to improve the efficiency, improve the exposure to offshore capabilities that we've built, improve the ability to deliver more with AI. … We should be able to take that to market in the early part of the next year.”
In July, Tenet reported outperformance across its business during Q2 that prompted a boost to its 2026 guidance, with results within Conifer “in line with prior expectations” as the company navigated the close of its CommonSpirit contract.