The Atlantic : What Financial Engineering Does to Hospitals

In The Atlantic piece, “What Financial Engineering Does to Hospitals,” financial experts Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean dig into the role private equity plays in the healthcare system, specifically, the industry’s targeting of hospitals and the negative impacts it can have on communities.

The story highlights Riverton, Wyoming, a city of about 11,000 people. In 2018, the local hospital, SageWest, was purchased by Apollo Global Management as part of the giant private-equity firm’s $5.6 billion deal to buy the LifePoint Health hospital chain.

The Atlantic October 28, 2023: What Financial Engineering Does to Hospitals

The deal, which initially seemed like a benefit to the community, has led to devastating cuts in service. The story features PESP’s work highlighting this issue:

“According to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, an advocacy group, almost 400 U.S. hospitals are still owned by private-equity firms. In deal after deal, private-equity-backed hospital companies made big promises about how the hospitals would improve. But the hospital business is hard. Over time, many PE-owned hospitals were sold off into less and less stable financial structures to pay down debt that wouldn’t have existed were it not for the previous dealmaking.”

You can see the full story here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/private-equity-hospitals-health-care/675779/