Private Equity Delivers Consistently Poor Health Outcomes
Emergency rooms, dentist offices, and nursing homes managed by the private equity industry consistently deliver worse health outcomes than other such medical institutions. The difference can mean life or death for patients.
From emergency rooms to the dentists’ office, research shows that private equity–managed health care performs poorly — often with deadly consequences. (Nancy Lane / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald via Getty Images)
Private equity, the scantly regulated high-risk industry best known for burying companies in debt and liquidating them for parts, wants to manage your health care — even if it means killing you. Research shows that when private funds enter the picture, patients suffer.
Here are four ways you could die at private equity’s hands:
1. Visiting an emergency room
A new Harvard Medical School study of more than one million Medicare ER visits found that patient death rates are 13 percent higher in private equity–owned ERs than their counterparts, likely thanks to staffing and salary cuts.
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