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Is Your Hospital or Doctor Owned by Private Equity? What Patients Need to Know

A growing number of health care facilities are being bought by these firms. Here’s how that may affect your care and what experts recommend

8-minute read

Rachel Somerstein,

AARP

Published October 16, 2026

Close-up of a health care worker wearing a surgical mask with stock market charts and financial data overlaid.

Getty Images

Private equity firms own a diverse and growing swath of companies, from restaurants and pet food brands to housing and newspapers — even day care.

Increasingly across the United States, these firms are entering health care. And that has implications for patient care.

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While there are plenty of for-profit owners in health care, “private equity is a very different beast,” says Atul Gupta, assistant professor of health care management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. “A key feature of [private equity] is that they’re not health care people. They’re finance people. For them, it’s about the returns they get on this investment.”

And for patients, that can mean higher costs and, in some cases, lower-quality care.

What is private equity?

A private equity firm pools money from investors to buy privately owned companies, with the goal of increasing their value and selling them for a profit.

When this happens in health care, it often leads to cost-cutting, such as reducing staff or streamlining business practices like billing. It can also result in higher prices and pressure on clinicians to perform more procedures. In some cases, it also shifts focus to serving patients with private insurance, which pays higher reimbursements than Medicare or Medicaid.

To some degree, other for-profit and nonprofit health systems and hospitals engage in similar practices. For that reason, researchers don’t agree that private equity is necessarily worse for patients than other health systems whose owners aggressively focus on profit.

One difference, though, is that private equity firms typically own companies for a short period — about five to seven years — before trying to sell them for a profit. In that way, the model is similar to flipping a house, says Gupta. Private equity deals also typically involve substantial debt, which in some cases has bankrupted hospitals, forcing them to close.

And though who owns your hospital or nursing home is rarely transparent, in some sectors it matters a lot — particularly when private equity ownership is demonstrably worse for patients.

Private-equity-owned nursing homes raise red flags

Gupta and others caution against nursing homes owned by private equity. “Definitely avoid them,” says Lynn Unruh, a nurse and professor emerita in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida.

Research has consistently shown that private-equity-owned facilities are neutral at best and, at worst, very bad. The stakes are high: A 2024 study Gupta coauthored of more than 18,000 nursing homes found that people were 10 percent more likely to die within 90 days of discharge from a facility owned by private equity.

That same research also showed decreases in other metrics of patient well-being. For instance, people were 50 percent more likely to take antipsychotic medication, which can increase the risk of death among people with dementia. Patients in private-equity-owned nursing homes were also more likely to have decreased mobility and increased pain.

Similarly, an older 2014 study comparing private-equity-owned nursing homes with other for-profit facilities in Florida found significantly higher rates of pressure ulcers (bedsores) among patients in private-equity-owned institutions. People in those facilities were also less likely to be walked by staff. And, according to the researchers, those problems became more common the longer a private equity firm was the owner.

To save costs, private-equity-owned nursing homes typically employ fewer nurses. And that may be a reason for such institutions’ comparatively poor quality: Research has shown that in these settings, nurse availability correlates with better patient outcomes.

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“Nursing homes are very low-technology kind of care environments,” explains Gupta. “It’s basically people helping you do your daily stuff to recover from serious surgery, or long-term care if you can’t take care of yourself.”

To find out if a nursing home is any good — no matter who owns it — Unruh and Gupta both suggest looking at the Medicare.gov website, which uses a five-star system to rank nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, hospices and other services.

Because of the importance of staff to nursing homes, Gupta says to focus on that metric first.

He also recommends doing a Google search or using an AI chat tool to research a nursing home’s history. Ask whether it has been in the news for any violations or been sued, Gupta says. “Oftentimes, nursing homes get sued by patient groups if there’s been some kind of negligence,” he adds.

In some cases, it may not be the nursing home that’s been in the headlines but its corporate parent, says Gupta, so you can try using that name as well.

Gupta adds that people tend to choose a nursing home or rehab facility that’s closest to them. But don’t assume what’s nearest is best, he says; a better facility might be a bit of a drive.

And don’t worry if a nursing home is for-profit: About 70 percent in the U.S. are, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “That doesn’t mean they’re out to get you,” Gupta says.

Tread carefully: private-equity-owned hospitals

In the U.S., there are some 447 hospitals owned by private equity, according to a 2026 report by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project — about 7 percent of all hospitals in the country. A full list of private-equity-owned hospitals is available here.

Research shows that these hospitals tend to be worse for patients than hospitals owned by other entities, including for-profit ones. A 2023 JAMA study of Medicare recipients found that patients were more likely to fall in private equity-owned hospitals. And even though private-equity-owned hospitals do fewer surgeries, the same research showed that when a person does have an operation at such a facility, they’re more likely to develop an infection. Central line infections, which can be life-threatening, are also far more likely in private-equity-owned hospitals.

These outcomes are concerning, the researchers concluded, because they indicate problems throughout a given institution — in general wards, surgical suites and the ICU. One reason for these harms may be that private-equity-owned hospitals tend to staff fewer nurses, similar to private-equity-run nursing homes.

In hospitals, mistakes happen all the time, Unruh says. “But if you’re in a hospital with poor staffing and resources, it’s much more likely to have errors,” she says. And that’s particularly troubling for older adults, Unruh points out. Because older adults are less resilient than younger people, it can be difficult for them to recover from such mistakes, leading to higher rates of death and long-lasting harm, she says.

What to know about private-equity-owned physician practices

Since the 2010s, private equity has also acquired medical specialties, with a particular focus on dermatology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, anesthesiology, urology, oncology, and obstetrics and gynecology.

But just because a private equity firm already owns the group where your doctor practices doesn’t mean you should leave.

If your provider is “giving you the time you need, and the attention you need, by all means keep the person,” says Unruh.

That also holds if a private equity firm buys the practice where you’re already a patient. “People should not flee their practice or a doctor they like because they happen to be acquired by private equity,” says Laura Alexander, an assistant professor of law at Ohio State University. “It’s not the case that every time that [private equity firm] buys a medical practice it gets worse,” she says. “Sometimes it gets better. Sometimes the back office improves and it’s easier to get electronic medical records or appointments.”

Because private-equity-owned practices want to increase revenue, they may also hire a lot of new providers, especially lower-paid physician assistants. And because of increased productivity expectations among such practices, they may be open for longer hours or require providers to see more patients per day, which can improve patient access.

“Impacts on pricing are pretty conclusive,” says Alexander. That may not be evident in copays, but the costs ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher insurance premiums, she explains. And when Medicaid or Medicare is billed, these increases are also felt by the public more generally.

What’s less clear is whether the quality of care improves as well. That can be difficult to assess because of the available data, says Daniel Arnold, a health economist at the Brown University School of Public Health.

Still, says Alexander, if private equity buys your doctor’s practice, you should be alert to potential differences in care.

For example, if you get a referral to see a specialist, it’s important to make note of whom they’re referring you to and why.

“In systems and [private-equity]-acquired companies, they will attempt to refer to their own affiliated practices. So they’re not sending you to the cardiologist that your primary care doctor thinks is the best cardiologist — they’re sending you to one affiliated with their network,” Alexander says.

And in specialties like dermatology, practices may also “upsell” patients on procedures that aren’t covered by insurance at all, such as “Botox and lasers and other cosmetic-type procedures,” says Lauren Roth, associate professor of law at the Haub School of Law at Pace University.

There’s also the potential risk that the clinic you go to may close. Private equity firms may do that if the site or group isn’t profitable, particularly if they attract high-risk patients with low reimbursement rates, such as those in rural emergency departments, Roth notes.

Because private equity firms typically require clinicians to see a high volume of patients, you might also feel the impacts of new private equity ownership because such providers spend less time with their patients.

Arnold notes that patient volume can be problematic because doctors “may become burnt-out at the end of the day and start making mistakes.” A high volume of patients may also mean waiting longer to see your doctor. And your doctor may be more likely to leave a private-equity-owned group, which some research indicates happens more often at these practices.

But these issues are common across the health care system — not only in private-equity-owned specialties. “A lot of people blame their doctors” for these frustrations, says Roth. But it’s really the systems that are to blame, she says, not individual clinicians.

Still, if you’re looking for a new clinician and have an alternative to one employed by a private-equity-owned practice, “I’d try the alternative,” says Arnold. “It’s less risky to try someone who’s not in [private equity] ownership.”

Rachel Somerstein is the author of Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section. Her reporting has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post and Women’s Health, among other publications.

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