By Jeffrey A. Newman Esq.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School, University of Chicago and University of Pittsburgh have conducted a major study which concludes that the profit seeking model of private equity companies that purchase hospitals raises the costs of health care and also has negative impacts on patient care including more people dying in the emergency rooms. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-24-03471
The apparent cause of the increase of deaths in the mergency departments is due to drecreases in staffing and salaries. The study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and reviewed Medicare data from 2009 to 2019 at 49 private equity hospitals. These were compared to 283 hospitals not purchased by private equity. The findings revealed that after the purchase of the private equity hospitals, the emergency room salaries spending by 18.2 percent and ICU by 15.9 percent. When staffing went down an additional seven deaths per 10,000 went up.
In addition, the researchers found that the private equity owned hospitals increasingly transferred their sickest patients to other hospitals.
Jeffrey Newman Law is a whistleblower law firm representing whistleblowers reporting violations of export controls, tariff evasion, healthcare cases and other kinds of WB cases. The firm website is www.JeffNewmanLaw.com . Attorney Newman can be reached at Jeff@Jeffnewmanlaw.com or at 978-880-4758
