Higher acquisition costs, however, have made the strategy of gobbling up smaller providers more tricky. And there's an open question of whether there's "too much money chasing too few deals," according to University of Virginia professor Susan Chaplinsky, prompting investors to begin to factor in more of their traditional cost-reduction tactics to their long-term strategies to compensate for a potential decline in valuations. "You can still make a healthy return even if you're not able to sell at a higher multiple or at the multiple you purchased at," Chaplinsky said.