Emergency Physician Employer Market Share and Concentration by Ownership Type

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Market Analysis
• Emergency Medicine

Background:

• The emergency physician workforce has undergone significant consolidation and corporatization.
• There is limited understanding of the current structure and dynamics of the emergency physician market.

Purpose of the Study:

• To characterize employer group market share in emergency medicine by ownership structure.
• To assess market concentration within the emergency physician workforce across different geographic regions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital General Information Dataset (2021).
• Defined ownership categories (health system, private equity, clinician partnerships) using Ivy Clinicians data (2024).
• Assessed emergency department (ED) visit volumes using National Emergency Department Inventories (2021) as a proxy.

Main Results:

• Health system groups staffed 33.0% of ED visits, followed by private equity (24.7%).
• The emergency medicine market is highly concentrated, with 84% of hospital referral regions showing high concentration.
• Top private equity groups dominate their market share, staffing 93.5% of private equity-managed ED visits.

Conclusions:

• Majority physician-owned groups manage less than half of all emergency department visits.
• The emergency medicine market exhibits significant regional concentration and concentration within private equity and national partnership ownership categories.