Overview

• Published Sept. 23 in Annals of Internal Medicine, the federally funded analysis links private equity ownership to worse emergency-department outcomes for Medicare patients.
• Using 100% Medicare claims and hospital cost reports from 2009–2019, the study compared 49 acquired hospitals with 293 matched controls and found seven additional deaths per 10,000 ED visits from a 52-per-10,000 baseline.
• Hospitals bought by private equity cut emergency-department salary spending by about 18% and intensive care unit salary spending by about 16%, alongside an average 11.6% drop in full-time employees and a 16.6% decline in total salary expenditures.
• After acquisition, transfers to other acute care hospitals rose 4.2% from the ED and about 10% from the ICU, while ICU length of stay fell 4.7%, consistent with reduced capacity to manage high-acuity patients.
• The findings build on prior research showing more preventable adverse events after private equity takeovers and have intensified policy scrutiny of investor-led hospital ownership.