Corporate Giants are buying your doctor’s practices; Is this good for the quality and cost of healthcare?

Unless you have never gone to a doctor, it is very likely that your doctor’s practice is now part of a larger corporation and that the people you knew who worked for them are no longer doing so.

Corporations such as Aetna, Summit Medical Group which is now part of CityMD and your local hospital system has likely been opening walk-in clinics everywhere.

Many of the larger groups are especially interested in the practices that serve many Medicare patients, as this is where the money is.

Primary care doctors after being starved and having to see high volumes just to exist are often now selling out to hospital systems that are flush with cash.

Gone is the caring doctor, but the large multidiscipline doctors’ office has arrived.

Gone are the days when your doctor would take the time to help you figure things out.  Today, they are the referral person who sends you on a specialist journey and often will avoid referring you outside the system even if this is where the best care is.

If Mcdonald’s were a healthcare company, this is how it’s now done where you and your doctor are widgets moving in a profit-centered system that is not designed around your health.

The NY Times recently reported on this phenomenon.  Check it out below

Corporate Giants Buy Up Primary Care Practices at Rapid Pace

Large health insurers and other companies are especially keen on doctors’ groups that care for patients in private Medicare plans.

By Reed Abelson Published May 8, 2023

It’s no surprise that the shortage of primary care doctors — who are critically important to the health of Americans — is getting worse.

They practice in one of medicine’s lowest paid, least glamorous fields. Most are overworked, seeing as many as 30 people a day; figuring out when a sore throat is a strep infection, or managing a patient’s chronic diabetes.

So why are multibillion-dollar corporations, particularly giant health insurers, gobbling up primary care practices? CVS Health, with its sprawling pharmacy business and ownership of the major insurer Aetna, paid roughly $11 billion to buy Oak Street Health, a fast-growing chain of primary care centers that employs doctors in 21 states. And Amazon’s bold purchase of One Medical, another large doctors’ group, for nearly $4 billion, is another such move.

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