First, private equity came for hospitals and long-term care facilities, then it came for specialty practices such as anesthesia, emergency medicine, gastroenterology and dermatology. And now it’s coming for primary care. At the lower end of the physician pay scale, primary care practices have generally become targets for private equity investors eyeing value-care optimization and referral patterns, reports Managed Healthcare Executive.
From 2010 to 2019, private equity healthcare deals totaled about $750 billion, according to the Nicholas C. Petris Center on Health Care Markets and Consumer Welfare at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health, rising from $41.5 billion in 2010 to $119.9 billion in 2019. Industry tracker PitchBook recorded $206 billion in healthcare deals in 2021, with 1,400 acquisitions. Petris Center researchers expect the rising trend to continue due to increased healthcare spending projections, available private equity capital and the disruption to healthcare that the COVID-19 pandemic caused. Read more.
