Private equity margin maximization and profit-making strategies focus on acquisition, short-term ownership, and sale of health care entities, including residency program opportunities.

This article explains how some investment practices of private equity firms generate profit by taking advantage of inequitably underserved patients in the US health care system. 

Private equity companies have no ethical or legal duties to patients and strive to maximize financial returns for their investors.

Private equity investments in health care have grown to over $750 billion in the past decade and include every segment of the US health sector.

One driver of the corporatization of medicine has been private equity firms’ acquisitions of physician practices.

As private equity funds acquire a growing share of America’s health care system, their focus has expanded from hospitals and nursing homes to physician practices.

Be cautious about drawing conclusions from a narrow sample of literature about private equity based on studies in one sector.

Private equity firms’ acquisition and management of physicians’ practices have been associated with increased cost and diminished quality.

Private equity firms exacerbate health inequity by driving hospital closures in historically underserved communities. Now nonprofit health systems are also vulnerable.

Inequity in access to care and life expectancy among the highest and lowest income earners has grown, along with profits of nonclinical actors in health care.