Private Equity in Healthcare – PESP’s July 2025 Roundup

Each month, PESP’s Healthcare Team will be putting together a roundup that shares the latest news stories related to private equity in healthcare and highlights the work that our team has published in the last month.

In the news

Report: Private equity’s grip on private duty nursing leads to higher costs, reduced care for medically complex children & adults

• PESP’s new report, “Private equity’s investments in private duty nursing,” outlines how the private equity business model could exacerbate staffing shortages and compromise care for children and adults with complex medical needs who rely on private duty nursing services.
• Private duty nursing is a critical form of individualized care that enables medically fragile individuals to remain in their homes rather than in institutional settings. However, PESP’s report shows potential risks with private equity-owned nursing agencies in which financial returns are prioritized over patient well-being.
• PESP calls for stronger antitrust enforcement, limitations on debt financing in healthcare acquisitions, and the expansion of paid caregiver programs with robust oversight to ensure accountability and protect patients.
• The report was covered in McKnight’s Home Care, Home Health Care News, and McKnight’s Senior Living.

Private equity went big on healthcare. States want it out – Quartz

• “While a few states already had laws on the books regulating private investment in healthcare, experts say the catalyst for the latest wave of legislation was the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care in 2024, the biggest hospital failure in decades.”
• Chris Noble, policy director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, noted that their fiduciary duty is to their investors, not patients, and said that focus can lead to cost-cutting, asset-stripping, and aggressive billing: “Private equity tries to get outsized returns in a short period of time,” he said, “and what we’ve seen is that this financialization of healthcare is incompatible with providing quality patient care.”
• In an article in The Progressive discussing state-level legislative efforts Noble added “Sometimes, with safety-net hospitals or rural hospitals, the private equity firm may be the only game in town willing to take on the risk of acquiring that hospital to keep it afloat. And that hospital may be the only one for many, many, miles in that community.”

Genesis HealthCare files for bankruptcy, nearing sale – McKnight’s Long-Term Care News

• Genesis HealthCare, one of the nation’s largest skilled nursing chains, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July saying it needed to address its “legacy debt structure.” PESP has tracked Genesis for years, warning in multiple reports that private equity ownership and real estate financialization created risks.
• According to a PESP report published in 2021, private equity firm Pinta Capital Partners invested in Genesis Healthcare taking the nursing home operator private in March 2021. Genesis Healthcare was previously owned by Formation Capital, but went public in 2014, and in 2021 went private again after receiving a cash infusion from an affiliate of Pinta Capital Partners.
• A PESP report published in March 2025 found that for the 219 facilities listed in CMS records as affiliates of Genesis Healthcare, the average overall star rating is 2.2 stars. A third of the Genesis facilities (73 of 219) have a one-star rating.
• Eileen O’Grady, PESP’s director of programs, raised concerns to McKnight’s about what is the latest in a string of bankruptcies by private equity-owned nursing home chains: “Too often, private equity firms have relied on unwieldy and arcane legal and financial structures to obscure mismanagement and harmful profiteering,” she told McKnight’s. “The fact that the company’s prepackaged reorganization plan involves selling itself to affiliates of its private equity sponsor is deeply troubling and merits close scrutiny.”

Healthcare team’s latest blogs, reports, and media mentions

Blog Posts:

• PESP talks private equity and the pending Walgreens acquisition on the Oddly Specific Podcast with Meredith Lynch
• Private Equity Healthcare Acquisitions – June 2025

Reports:

• Private Equity’s Investments in Private Duty Nursing
  • The report received coverage in McKnight’s Home Care, Home Health Care News, and McKnight’s Senior Living.

Other PESP healthcare news and mentions:

• PESP’s policy director Chris Noble was quoted in Quartz and The Progressive discussing state-level efforts to legislate around private equity.
• KSFR’s The Forum featured PESP’s programs director Eileen O’Grady in a July 23 discussion on private equity in New Mexico healthcare.
• The Lever cited PESP in a feature on private equity’s growing control over dental chains.
• The PE Hospital Tracker and PESP’s 2024 report on Steward Health Care were cited in HealthLeaders.
• Healthcare Dive cited PESP in a piece on Steward Health Care’s bankruptcy and lawsuit against its former CEO.