Improving healthcare
Private equity plays a critical role supporting quality, affordable healthcare in the United States. Private equity-funded innovations have delivered more effective treatments and saved lives, helping lower healthcare costs, and increase access to lifesaving care for millions of Americans.
Private equity has invested $1.6 trillion into U.S. healthcare since 2008. While private equity’s investment in healthcare only represents a small portion of the massive U.S. healthcare system, the industry has made critical contributions benefiting providers and patients alike. These investments have funded research into deadly diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, expanded and renovated facilities, modernized medical records and healthcare data, and made other needed investments.
Improving Patient Care, Delivering Cures, AND Increasing Access in Rural Communities
Investing in Medical Technologies that Improve Lives
To bring a new drug to market, the FDA requires pharmaceutical firms to perform expensive and time-consuming studies to demonstrate safety and efficacy. Hundreds of potential treatments can fall by the wayside without financial help. Private equity investments have supported treatments for life-threatening conditions, such as Leukemia, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, HIV, and breast cancer, and for several debilitating conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and ulcerative colitis.
Giving Doctors, Nurses, and Hospitals the Resources to Treat Patients
Higher Employment Ratio
Private equity-backed hospitals employ a higher ratio of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists compared to their non-private equity counterparts, according to research from Indiana and Georgetown Universities.
More Time with Patients
Private equity-backed doctors and nurses spend more time with their patients according to research from Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Oregon.
Improved Quality of Care
Private equity can “improve quality of care because physicians no longer need to focus on running a business” according to a report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission(MedPAC).
Private equity provides healthcare companies with access to capital markets, lines of credit, pools of managerial skills, and experience in turnarounds. This critical investment lets doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers focus on treating patients instead of running the back-room business operations and help life sciences and medical device manufactures bring innovative treatments to patients.
Private equity is investing in nursing homes to improve their financial well-being and their quality of care at a time when skilled nursing homes accepting Medicare patients are facing reduced federal support.
– A study from the University of California, Los Angeles and Duke University found that private equity-owned nursing homes fared far better under COVID-19 than non-private equity-backed homes, with lower rates of cases and deaths.
– An October 2020 study from Weill Cornell Medical College found “no statistically significant differences” in staffing levels between private equity-owned nursing homes and other ownership types.
