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Private Equity in Healthcare

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  • First Online:
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Private Equity

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Synonyms

Costs of care; Healthcare; Patient outcomes; Private equity; Type of ownership

Description/Definition

Private equity (PE) ownership in the US healthcare industry has grown dramatically in recent decades. PE has entered all parts of the healthcare value chain, but the greatest interest and focus of research has been around its acquisition of care providers, which has over time increasingly shifted toward “buy-and-build” strategies that benefit from economies of scale by combining many small practices or care facilities. The distinct features of the healthcare industry – including high levels of government subsidy, insurance payers that separate revenue from the consumer, and the importance of trust that providers will act in consumers’ interest – have led policy-makers and patient advocates to voice concern about the impacts of PE, especially in subsectors with lower levels of competition and that serve more needy or unsophisticated patients.

The PE literature more broadly has...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. NYU Stern and NBER, New York, NY, USA

    Sabrina T. Howell

  2. MIT Sloan, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Tong Liu

Authors
  1. Sabrina T. Howell
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  2. Tong Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sabrina T. Howell .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

    Douglas Cumming

  2. Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, UK

    Benjamin Hammer

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Howell, S.T., Liu, T. (2023). Private Equity in Healthcare. In: Cumming, D., Hammer, B. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Private Equity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38738-9_63-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38738-9_63-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38738-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38738-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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