Value-based care, venture capital firms driving change
Ms. Kenney pointed to value-based care as driving much of this activity by hospitals. “We all embrace [value-based payment], because we need to get a handle on cost, and we want better quality [but] those trends tend to favor integrated systems and systems that can handle a lot of risk and populations of patients.”
Still, the moves by private equity firms and health insurers in this space is relatively new, said Ms. Kenney, who added that her organization started tracking this trend 3 years ago. She pointed to a “marked acceleration” in the trend toward employing physicians and the sale of practices in the 18 months following the pandemic’s start; nonhospital corporate entities drove that steep increase, she said.
Ms. Kenney calls for further study and “guardrails” to respond to “that force in the health care system,” referring to the acquisition of practices by entities such as private equity firms. “Are these big [health care] systems going to continue to see patients in underserved areas, rural areas, and Medicaid patients if it doesn’t make sense financially to do so?
“That’s what we’re teeing up with this research,” added Ms. Kenney. “We are providing information that starts some conversations around what we might want to think about in terms of policies to ensure that we don’t impact patients’ access to care.”
The Physicians Advocacy Institute represents more than 170,000 physicians and medical students. Avalere Health used the IQVIA OneKey database for the report. The researchers studied the 3-year period from Jan. 1, 2019, to Jan. 1, 2022.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.