Surgical Quality at Rural Hospitals After Private Equity Acquisition

To compare the influence of private equity acquisition on surgical quality among rural hospitals.

Despite the growth of private equity's presence in healthcare markets and growing concerns of its adverse associations with quality of care, less is known about its influence on rural hospitals.

We evaluated common general surgery procedures (appendectomy, cholecystectomy, colectomy, and incisional hernia repair) among Medicare beneficiaries between 2011 and 2020. We defined rurality using Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes and identified rural hospitals acquired by private equity using the Private Equity Stakeholder Project Private Equity Hospital Tracker. We matched each private equity-acquired hospital with up to 10 similar rural hospitals not acquired by private equity. The primary outcome was 30-day postoperative mortality, and secondary outcomes included complications, serious complications, failure to rescue, and 30-day readmissions. We applied an event-time difference-in-differences framework with hospital and year fixed effects, controlling for beneficiary characteristics and comorbidities.

Among 96,048 patients across 390 rural hospitals, private equity acquisition was associated with statistically significant increases in 30-day mortality (1.1 percentage point increase, P=0.04), complications (2.5 percentage point increase, P=0.03), and serious complications (1.5 percentage point increase, P=0.02) despite similar hospital characteristics and modest differences in patient demographics.

Private equity acquisition of rural hospitals was associated with some declines in surgical quality, which underscores the need to continue closely monitoring private equity's impact on rural healthcare delivery.