alt Hacker NewsEasy to imagine practices where the primary owner is going to retire and looking for an out.
Maybe they find a buyer in a doctor, maybe they don't, but PE provides them an exit that keeps the practice operating in the community.
Many people don't really run businesses efficiently. There was an interesting video I saw recently where a sole doctor practice made a few changes to their workflow that allowed them to hire more doctors and handle 2x as many people - I would expect a PE firm would pursue similar changes that help increase the number of people they can service, increasing competitiveness and lowering prices in the long run.
I don't know how these tradeoffs interact with patient care, but I wouldn't inherently expect PE to be worse at this than any other operating model.
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Lots of other efficiencies to look at. Tons of them are directly bad for the patient (capturing more of the surplus is an efficiency that businesses generally go hard at).
Ultimately, I think the issue is when people making decisions are able to treat the impact as an abstraction.
A structure to run business efficiently using practiced methods is always a good thing. However from what little I have understood, the goal of Private Equity is to maximize the dollar value on their investment. Somehow they have settled with the playbook that running a business even profitably isn't the best idea. Instead its much more profitable to take over the struggling business at good price, squeeze everything possible from the assets (thats where PE seem to be investing their expertise unfortunately) over duration of time. Update the books in a manner that it saves money on taxes and carry forwards the loss, making money in the process.
Why do you need to sell a private practice? There’s no brand to sell, it’s just you and that will be gone.
PE is scourge in this space. They’ve probably taken over every dental office already and now they push unnecessary procedures and whatever your insurance will bear just because.
> and lowering prices in the long run.
My sweet summer child...
>> Maybe they find a buyer in a doctor, maybe they don't, but PE provides them an exit that keeps the practice operating in the community.
If the practice is to continue, there must still be practitioners working there. Id prefer they buy out the one retiring, but the retiree can sell to whoever they want.