Patients for Profit

Private equity groups are cashing in on rising rates of alcohol and drug addiction in the U.S. But they aren’t necessarily investing in centers with the best treatment standards, and they often cut extra services.

While some doctors seem eager for a huge payoff, others are warily watching what happens when private equity firms take charge of orthopedic practices.

Doctors, consumer advocates, and some lawmakers are looking forward to a California lawsuit against private equity-backed Envision Healthcare. The case is part of a multistate effort to enforce rules banning corporate ownership of physician practices.

Private equity-backed Headlands Research heralded its covid-19 vaccine trials as a chance to boost participation among diverse populations, then it shuttered multiple sites that conducted them.

Four Seasons Health Care collapsed after years of private equity investors rolling in one after another to buy its business, sell its real estate, and at times wrest multimillion-dollar profits from it through complex debt schemes. The deal-making failed to account for the true cost of senior care.

As private equity groups are swarming into aging America’s eye care, the consolidation is costing the U.S. health care system and patients more money.

Private equity firms are seeing opportunities for profit in hospice care, once the domain of nonprofit organizations. The investment companies are transforming the industry — and might be jeopardizing patient care — in the process.

At a moment when half of U.S. states stand poised to outlaw or sharply curtail abortion services, the nation’s most popular emergency contraception brand rests in the unlikely stewardship of two private equity firms.

Colorado lawmakers approved a measure that will make it easier for people to fix their power wheelchairs when they wear out or break down, but arcane regulations and manufacturers create high hurdles for nationwide reform.

An aging population in need of regular cancer screenings has driven private equity companies, seeking profits, to invest in many gastroenterology practices and set up aggressive billing practices. Steep prices on routine tests are one consequence for patients.

In his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden decried these financial arrangements, which two members of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee had already asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate.

Nearly all psychiatric residential treatment centers for children in South Carolina operate as for-profit businesses — some backed by private equity — and many prioritize out-of-state kids because it’s better for the bottom line. The scramble to secure treatment for children and teenagers has become so competitive that South Carolina will spend millions more each year as of April 1 to keep out-of-state patients from flooding the state's treatment facilities.