Dermatologist: Patient care suffered when private equity took over
. The new titans of finance, these firms have taken over broad swaths of U.S. industry in recent years. Using large amounts of debt to finance their acquisitions, private equity firms acquire companies, aim to increase their profits and then try to resell them a few years later for more than they paid.
Private equity firms contend that they create jobs, support businesses and help provide comfortable retirements for pensioners invested in the strategy. But many outside the industry are especially critical of the industry’s involvement in health care. One private equity-owned hospital staffing company, for example, was behind many of the surprise emergency department bills that outraged hospital patients and resulted in a new law to curb the practices. It takes effect next month.
Backing Pinnacle is Chicago Pacific Capital, a private equity firm founded in 2014. The firm “invests in companies that it believes are positioned to lead innovations in health-care delivery and in caring for aging populations,” a regulatory filing says. Chicago Pacific had $1.8 billion under management, including borrowings, as of December 2020.
The company contended that she had behaved unethically, Brown said, but she said she and her lawyer obtained her personnel file and found nothing in it to support the claim. “They started targeting me,” Brown said. “They weren’t happy with me sending emails up the chain about stuff going wrong.”Brown said she got along well with her associates in the practice, some of whom called her Dr. Awesome and gave her a drinking glass with that title embossed on it.
Konda said Brown’s experience isn’t unusual. “Dermatologists from all over the country have shared with me their experiences with The extenders also ordered more biopsies than doctors, generating increased fees for their patients. Physician extenders are supposed to be monitored by doctors, but private equity-backed companies often assign remote supervising physicians, in far-off locations, who have never met the people they are supervising. That diminishes effective oversight.
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