Private equity reduces patient care for profits over patients

[THE_DEVIL]

Ottumwa mention.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/invest...FHjb6Z2YM5jucOguwM_aem_L9BwSf4JbXP6hd2ZWKCdDg

 

[Hawk_4shur]

Private equity ownership of hospitals, nursing homes, etc is just wrong. PE firms are built to make a profit - a lot of profit - often at the expense of service. When those services are taking care of the sick and elderly it's just a tragedy. It shouldn't be allowed.

 

[Aardvark86]

Private equity ownership of hospitals, nursing homes, etc is just wrong. PE firms are built to make a profit - a lot of profit - often at the expense of service. When those services are taking care of the sick and elderly it's just a tragedy. It shouldn't be allowed.

In my experience, the ownership of the actual health care providers is "relatively" less common.

What PE more commonly focuses on, particularly in the health care sector, is 'middlemen' entities such as processors, practice management companies, and distributors. PE generally abhors "direct" government regulatory risk and these types of arrangements enable them to suck out commission-like payments for "efficiency-based" outcomes, which of course is where cost/care cutting comes in, while maintaining the plausible deniability that the HCPs make care decisions.

But the broader point is a good one -- they are unregulated entities that do have a substantial effect on care and whose cost benefits generally don't inure to the benefit of the system. I sort of like some of the state initiatives around notice of PE deals within HC.

 

[Hawk_4shur]

In my experience, the ownership of the actual health care providers is "relatively" less common.

I think that's probably true, except it shouldn't be allowed at all.

I don't really blame the PE firms. It's like blaming the lion for eating smaller, slower animals. It's what they do. So, you have to make licensed health care facilities off limits.

 

[Aardvark86]

I think that's probably true, except it shouldn't be allowed at all.

I don't really blame the PE firms. It's like blaming the lion for eating smaller, slower animals. It's what they do. So, you have to make licensed health care facilities off limits.

In many states, a doctrine called the "corporate practice of medicine" addresses this with respect to licensed professionals by limiting the ability of a pc to share profits with a non licensed person (though there are certainly workarounds). usually you don't have a concept for licensed institutions though, probably due to some antiquated view that hospitals and nursing homes don't make care decisions either.

One of the weird things about the us health system is that we can't seem to figure out what site is going to be the "locus" of patient care -- hospital based health systems have been on the rise, payors are fighting them for it by rolling up to look more like the old kaiser model, and then there's still some independent docs and pharmacists out there. You can generally trust the independents more in terms of the care experience, but the reality is that they tend to be the sloppiest when it comes to things like billing, etc.

 

[Titanhawk2]

Medicare denies too much stuff to complain only about hospital ownership

 

[Urohawk]

Medicare denies too much stuff to complain only about hospital ownership

Medicare never denies anything. The single best insurance company to work with is medicare. I file a claim for a patient and they pay me. Now they don't pay as well as private insurance and there is a lot of government regulation but medicare's efficiancy is spot on.