The private equity firms that gobble up hospitals and spit them out

For roughly the past 20 years, private equity firms have been on a buying spree of health care businesses, like hospitals, surgical centers, physician practices, nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and hospices. According to the nonprofit Private Equity Stakeholder Project, which uses Centers for Medicare and Medicaid data, about 488 U.S. hospitals are currently owned by private equity, more than 22 percent of all for-profit hospitals. A study in Health Affairs found that the number of private equity–controlled physician practices increased from 816 in 2012 to 5,779 in 2021.