Physician consolidation is accelerating across hospitals, payers and private equity groups, reshaping how and where physicians practice.
Here are 10 statistics from studies and reports released in the last four months about the rise of physician consolidation:
1. In 2024, at least 47% of physicians were employed by or affiliated with hospital systems, an increase from about 30% in 2012, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
2. Meanwhile, just 42% of physicians worked in private practice in 2024, down from 60% in 2012.
3. Corporate entities, including payers and private equity–backed firms, employed 23% of physicians in 2024, up from 15% in 2019. Within that group, about 6.5% of physicians practiced in private equity–owned organizations, compared to 4.5% in 2022.
4. In certain specialties — such as gastroenterology, dermatology and ophthalmology — private equity participation now exceeds 30%.
5. Hospital-physician consolidation was especially pronounced in the Midwest, where it reached 66%, and in rural areas, where it stood at 58% in 2024.
6. The share of physician practices acquired by hospitals rose by 71.5% between 2008 and 2016, according to a study published in July by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
7. By 2016, nearly half of practices were hospital-owned. At the end of the study period, hospitals owned 47.2% of all physician practices.
8. Two years post-merger, prices increased by 3.3% for hospital services and 15.1% for physician services, with no measurable improvements in quality, according to the study.
9. Payer-operated practices account for 4.2% of Medicare primary care services in 2023, up from 0.78% in 2016, according to a study published in July in Health Affairs Scholar.
10. Optum alone controlled 2.71% of the national market by service volume, making it the dominant payer-affiliated provider in primary care.
