Raze Anatomy

What happens when major public hospitals are turned into private practices owned by private equity? A lot of complications for the patient. You might want to put on a fresh set of scrubs for this piece from Dhruv Khullar in The New Yorker. The Gilded Age of Medicine Is Here. “A study published in JAMA found that, after hospitals were acquired by private-equity firms, Medicare patients were more likely to suffer falls and contract bloodstream infections; another study found that if private equity acquired a nursing home its residents became eleven per cent more likely to die. Although private-equity firms often argue that they infuse hospitals with capital, a recent analysis found that hospital assets tend to decrease after acquisition. Yet P.E. now oversees nearly a third of staffing in U.S. emergency departments and owns more than four hundred and fifty hospitals. In some of them, patients were ‘forced to sleep in hallways, and doctors who spoke out were threatened with termination.'”