Private equity firms are increasingly buying hospitals, and they have poorer results

[thewayne]

YAY CAPITALISM! YAY VULTURE CAPITALISM!

They do all the things with hospitals that they do with all the other things they buy: make the companies pay rent for the land they used to own, hit them with tons of debt to the vulture capitalists that just bought them, and cut costs to the bone. Here's a lovely quote from the article: "In private equity hospitals, patients experienced a 27 percent increase in falls, a 38 percent increase in central-line bloodstream infections (despite placing 16 percent fewer central lines than control hospitals), and surgical site infections doubled."

Placing FEWER central lines and having MORE central line infections? Now that is an achievement!

*sigh*

https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/01/hospitals-slash-staff-services-quality-of-care-when-private-equity-takes-over/

Comments

[silveradept]

Even though we know that a lot of hospitals are run with the idea of them being profitable, at least nominally, they're constrained in ways that mean they have to provide at least acceptable care. Acquisition by capital companies seems to throw those very few boundaries out the window, and everyone suffers. It's not like you can usually go to some other local hospital, and that's assuming you even have one. Seems like another good candidate for nationalization and socialization.

[thewayne]

We have one local hospital just down the mountain, 20ish minutes away.  Given the option, we'll drive 90 minutes across the basin to Las Cruces.  Three hospitals, better care, and better insurance coverage.