Private Equity and the Practice of Medicine

Is private equity monetizing medicine at patients’ expense? According to associate professor of health care policy and medicine Zirui Song and other Harvard researchers, patients in hospitals owned by private equity firms suffered significantly more hospital-acquired adverse events than those being cared for in similar hospitals with no such investor participation. Song, director of research at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Primary Care, analyzed more than 4.8 million Medicare claims tied to hospital stays between 2009 and 2019. Patients in the hospitals acquired by private equity firms experienced 25.4 percent more hospital-acquired conditions. Underlying that alarming overall difference was a 37.7 percent increase in central-line associated bloodstream infections and a 27.3 percent increase in falls, compared to peer hospitals with no private equity involvement.

Investors have taken a $1-trillion stake during the past decade in everything from nursing homes to physicians’ practices and hospitals.

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