Nearly 78% of physicians are now employed by hospitals, health systems or other corporate entities, according to new data released Thursday.
For the first time since the Physicians Advocacy Institute started tracking this information, the percentage of practice ownership by corporations (30%) surpassed hospitals or health systems (28%). The former category includes health insurers, private equity firms and large pharmacy chains, PAI reported.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these trends, with radiologists and other physicians facing burnout and seeking the stability of selling their organization.
“Corporate entities are assuming control of physician practices and changing the face of medicine in the United States with little to no scrutiny from regulators,” Kelly Kenney, chief executive officer of PAI, said in a statement. “Physicians have an ethical responsibility to their patients’ health. By contrast, corporate entities have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and are motivated to put profits first.”
The lobbying group commissioned consulting firm Avalere to conduct the analysis, which relied on information from Fortune 500 data firm IQVIA. Its investigation included solo and single-location small practices, along with large, multispecialty groups with multiple locations. The analysis tracked ownership patterns over the past five years, dating to 2019.
Consolidation slowed but continued through 2022 and 2023 with hospitals and other corporate entities acquiring 8,100 practices. Between 2019 and 2024, such entities acquired over 44,000 practices. About 3 in 5 medical doctors (or nearly 59%) now work for a nonphysician business owner, Avalere found.
As of 2012, fewer than 26% of physicians worked for hospitals or health systems. But in the 12 years that followed, almost 263,000 additional docs joined such entities. Hospitals and health systems fueled the largest increases in physician employment over the past two years, adding 16,000 docs to their payrolls. And more than 127,000 doctors joined hospitals or other corporate entities between 2019 and 2024.
You can read more about the research here and find our coverage of the previous PAI research here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.