Wesfarmers is understood to be weighing up a $3 billion offer for Healthscope's operating business, which runs 44 private hospitals and a chain of pathology and medical centres.

Wesfarmers has declined to confirm or deny its interest, saying it never comments on speculation on mergers and acquisitions.

The Perth-based conglomerate is cashed up after selling its insurance underwriting and broking operations for $2.9 billion over the past five months and its name has been associated with almost a dozen potential deals, including Orica's chemical business, equipment hire group Coates Hire, consumer electronics and appliances retailers JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys and Hong Kong-based supermarket chain PARKnSHOP.

These deals would make sense, delivering economies of scale and synergies with Wesfarmers' existing operations in retail, chemicals and fertiliser and industrial and safety.

The acquisition of Healthscope would represent a new direction for Wesfarmers, taking it into a sector where it has no expertise and where synergies would be minimal.

But analysts said Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder often took a holistic approach to investments and might be attracted to the healthcare sector because of the ageing population and government policies in favour of privatisation.

Mr Goyder has also indicated recently that Wesfarmers would be prepared to look outside its portfolio and apply its skills to a range of different businesses.

Unlike his predecessors, Mr Goyder is not a firm believer in ''logical incrementalism'', a strategy of taking small, measured steps to deliver guaranteed returns. His $20 billion acquisition of the Coles Group in 2007 took Wesfarmers into supermarkets, liquor, petrol and discount department stores.

A move into healthcare would enable Wesfarmers to diversify its portfolio, which is now top heavy in retail after the exit from insurance and following a steep downturn in earnings from coal.

''I'd need convincing as to why they would [bid for Healthscope], they have no expertise in it, but that's never stopped them before,'' said one analyst, who declined to be named. ''All consumer companies in the world are struggling for growth and the reality is that a lot of Australian companies have spent a lot of money on capex and it hasn't generated growth. So the next logical way to get growth is by looking seriously at mergers and acquisitions.''

Wesfarmers has a 20-man business development team in Australia and Hong Kong actively searching for growth opportunities and analysts said the team would review almost every major asset for sale.

''There's a long road between Wesfarmers being mentioned as a potential buyer and getting it across the line,'' another analyst said. ''I would have thought that it's a little too specialised for them.''

Given the lack of management expertise and synergies, Wesfarmers could struggle to justify offering more for Healthscope than other mooted bidders, which include US healthcare company HCA Holdings, Chinese conglomerate Fosun Pharma and Malaysia's IHH.

It is understood that these bidders are interested in Healthscope in its entirety, while Wesfarmers is said to be interested in the operating assets and not property holdings.

The mooted price tag of more than $4 billion would represent a multiple of 12 times historical earnings.