Private equity and our healthcare. The meeting of doctors started with a prayer and ended with them being fired.
In a few months I will turn 76. Healthcare, health insurance, Medicare, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, privatization and healthcare access all consume more and more of my attention.
That includes private equity’s growing investments in the healthcare industry.
The New York Times reported in 2023:
…in places like Tucson, Ariz.; Columbus, Ohio; and Providence, R.I. — a single private equity firm owned more than 30 percent of practices in a given specialty in 2021. In 13 percent of the markets, the firms owned groups employing more than half the local specialists.
Private equity strategy is to focus on cost-cutting measures to boost short-term profitability which inevitably lead to increases in patient costs, poor customer service, cost cutting and layoffs.
My recent diagnosis of Crohn’s disease requires frequent biologic treatments and consultation with a gastroenterologist.
Gastroenterology is the perfect example of the cost to patients when private equity gets takes over healthcare.
The Biden administration has recently taken some tiny, tiny baby steps in trying to control private equity practices.
There is no doubt that a Trump administration would be a green light to private equity expansion.
Locally, Chicago’s Ascension facilities are terminating more than 110 doctors and other providers at its Chicago-area hospitals, turning them over to a private equity-backed firm, SCP Health.
By June 1, Atlanta-based health care staffing firm SCP Health will take over all Ascension Illinois “hospitalist” employees — medical directors, doctors, physicians assistants, nurse practitioners and other providers who care for patients during a hospital stay.
Terminated Ascension hospitalists have been told to reapply for their jobs at SCP Health but will see their pay cut by $15K to $35K a year.
The out-sourced hospitalists - healthcare providers who work solely at a hospital - will also see increased patient load and other cost cutting policies demanded by the private equity owners who are only concerned with increasing the bottom line.
Chicago-area hospitalists at Ascension, which is part of a national Catholic health system, were first notified of the outsourcing to SCP in a January 29th meeting.
The meeting began with a prayer but ended with news that they would be fired.
Crain’s reports:
Other Ascension hospitals that outsource staff to third-party firms have seen labor strife in recent months. Last year, emergency department workers at Ascension St. John Hospital in Detroit and employed by Knoxville, Tenn.-based TeamHealth voted to form a union following complaints of chronic understaffing that was hurting patient care. Earlier this month, the same workers threatened to strike over understaffing.