Evaluating trends in private equity ownership and impacts on health outcomes, costs, and quality: Systematic review

Objective: To review the evidence on trends and impacts of private equity (PE) ownership of healthcare operators.

Design: Systematic review.

Data sources: PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Scopus, and SSRN.

Eligibility criteria for study selection: Empirical research studies of any design that evaluated PE owned healthcare operators.

Main outcome measures: The main outcome measures were impact of PE ownership on health outcomes, costs to patients or payers, costs to operators, and quality. The secondary outcome measures were trends and prevalence of PE ownership of healthcare operators.

Data synthesis: Studies were classified as finding either beneficial, harmful, mixed, or neutral impacts of PE ownership on main outcome measures. Results across studies were narratively synthesized and reported. Risk of bias was evaluated using ROBINS-I (Risk Of Bias In Non-randomised Studies of Interventions).

Results: The electronic search identified 1778 studies, with 55 meeting the inclusion criteria. Studies spanned eight countries, with most (n=47) analyzing PE ownership of healthcare operators in the US. Nursing homes were the most commonly studied healthcare setting (n=17), followed by hospitals and dermatology settings (n=9 each); ophthalmology (n=7); multiple specialties or general physician groups (n=5); urology (n=4); gastroenterology and orthopedics (n=3 each); surgical centers, fertility, and obstetrics and gynecology (n=2 each); and anesthesia, hospice care, oral or maxillofacial surgery, otolaryngology, and plastics (n=1 each). Across the outcome measures, PE ownership was most consistently associated with increases in costs to patients or payers. Additionally, PE ownership was associated with mixed to harmful impacts on quality. These outcomes held in sensitivity analyses in which only studies with moderate risk of bias were included. Health outcomes showed both beneficial and harmful results, as did costs to operators, but the volume of studies for these outcomes was too low for conclusive interpretation. In some instances, PE ownership was associated with reduced nurse staffing levels or a shift towards lower nursing skill mix. No consistently beneficial impacts of PE ownership were identified.

Conclusions: Trends in PE ownership rapidly increased across almost all healthcare settings studied. Such ownership is often associated with harmful impacts on costs to patients or payers and mixed to harmful impacts on quality. Owing to risk of bias and frequent geographic focus on the US, conclusions might not be generalizable internationally.

Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42022329857.