Infections and falls more likely at private equity-owned hospitals
Patients at hospitals acquired by private equity firms
saw a 25% increase in adverse events, new research shows.
JAKE JOHNSON for Common Dreams
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| Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence is shown in June 2021. (Kenneth C. Zirkel/Creative Commons – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en) |
EDITOR'S NOTE: These types of problems are evident at
A study published
Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found
that patients are more likely to fall or suffer infections at hospitals owned
by private equity firms, whose role in the U.S. healthcare system has grown exponentially in
recent years.
The study uses Medicare claims data from between 2009 and
2019 to compare patient complications at private equity-acquired hospitals and
control facilities not owned by private equity. Dr. Sneha Kannan, a critical
care physician and the study's lead author, told The New York
Times that she was surprised by the extent of the difference between
the two.
Patients at private equity-owned hospitals saw a 25.4%
increase in adverse events such as falls and dangerous central-line bloodstream
infections in the three years after the acquisition, according
to the new study—even though the private equity hospitals analyzed in the paper
tended to have younger and lower-risk patients.
"Surgical site infections doubled from 10.8 to 21.6 per 10,000 hospitalizations at private equity hospitals despite an 8.1% reduction in surgical volume; meanwhile, such infections decreased at control hospitals," the study shows.
The results indicate that the quality of inpatient care
is significantly worse at hospitals owned by private equity firms, which are
notorious for bleeding companies dry
for a quick profit at the expense of workers and local communities.
Over the past decade, private equity companies have dramatically extended their
reach in U.S. healthcare, purchasing physician practices, hospice care facilities, nursing homes,
and hospitals.
The new study in JAMA offers the latest evidence of
the private equity industry's increasingly harmful effects
on the U.S. healthcare system, which already leaves tens of millions of people uninsured
and vulnerable to medical and financial disaster.
A report released earlier this
year by the consumer advocacy group Public
Citizen notes that "private equity has targeted segments
of the healthcare industry since at least the 1990s, with many predictable
outcomes."
"Among them, shocking lapses in safety have
occurred, prices have risen faster than at non-private-equity-acquired entities
and patients have been subjected to price gouging schemes," the report
states. "The conflict between providers' obligations to provide the best
care and private equity investors' insatiable appetites for maximized provides
is clear."
The new peer-reviewed study was published just weeks
after the Senate Budget Committee launched a
bipartisan investigation into the negative impacts of private equity ownership
on U.S. hospitals.
"As private equity has moved into healthcare, we
have become increasingly concerned about the associated negative outcomes for
patients," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chair of the budget panel,
said in a statement earlier this month.
"From facility closures to compromised care, it's
now a familiar story: Private equity buys out a hospital, saddles it with debt,
and then reduces operating costs by cutting services and staff—all while
investors pocket millions," the senator added. "Before the dust
settles, the private equity firm sells and leaves town, leaving communities to
pick up the pieces."
