One of the most striking trends in American health care in recent years has been the injection of private equity into the system, according to the Review of Opthalmology. The private equity model centers around increasing the value of purchased practices for eventual resale to a second private equity buyer, who hopes to repeat the process for another eventual resale, often referred to as “the second bite of the apple.”
According to a 2021 report from the American Antitrust Institute, estimated annual private equity deals in American health care tripled from $41.5 billion in 2010 to $119 billion in 2019. And a report from the American Medical Association found that in 2018 the number of doctors who were employed by a company surpassed the number who owned their own practices for the first time. Read more.
