Increasing competition, reducing private equity investment in health care: a slideshow

Private equity investors are acquiring health care providers, including physicians’ firms, at an increasing rate.

There are factors that influence doctors to allow that investment. But that’s not always good for quality of treatment or costs to patients, according to the authors of “Monetizing Medicine: Private Equity and Competition in Physician Practice Markets.”

“Do private equity acquisitions of physician practices lead to price increases? The answer appears to be yes, in almost all specialties,” said the report by the American Antitrust Institute, the Petris Center of the School of Public Health of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

What could slow down the rates of acquisition of physicians’ practices across the country? The report offered eight immediate policy steps that could change the landscape of private equity investment in health care.