Sick Profit: Investigating Private Equity’s Stealthy Takeover of Health Care Across Cities and Specialties

January 9, 2023 Vera

Fred Schulte, Kaiser Health News

Two-year-old Zion Gastelum died just days after dentists performed root canals and put crowns on six baby teeth at a clinic affiliated with a private equity firm.

His parents sued the Kool Smiles dental clinic in Yuma, Arizona, and its private equity investor, FFL Partners. They argued the procedures were done needlessly, in keeping with a corporate strategy to maximize profits by overtreating kids from lower-income families enrolled in Medicaid. Zion died after being diagnosed with “brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen,” according to the lawsuit.

Kool Smiles “overtreats, underperforms and overbills,” the family alleged in the suit, which was settled last year under confidential terms. FFL Partners and Kool Smiles had no comment but denied liability in court filings.

Private equity is rapidly moving to reshape health care in America, coming off a banner year in 2021, when the deep-pocketed firms plowed $206 billion into more than 1,400 health care acquisitions, according to industry tracker PitchBook.

Seeking quick returns, these investors are buying into eye care clinics, dental management chains, physician practices, hospices, pet care providers, and thousands of other companies that render medical care nearly from cradle to grave. Private equity-backed groups have even set up special “obstetric emergency departments” at some hospitals, which can charge expectant mothers hundreds of dollars extra for routine perinatal care.

As private equity extends its reach into health care, evidence is mounting that the penetration has led to higher prices and diminished quality of care, a KHN investigation has found. KHN found that companies owned or managed by private equity firms have agreed to pay fines of more than $500 million since 2014 to settle at least 34 lawsuits filed under the False Claims Act, a federal law that punishes false billing submissions to the federal government with fines. Most of the time, the private equity owners have avoided liability.

New research by the University of California-Berkeley has identified “hot spots” where private equity firms have quietly moved from having a small foothold to controlling more than two-thirds of the market for physician services such as anesthesiology and gastroenterology in 2021. And KHN found that in San Antonio, more than two dozen gastroenterology offices are controlled by a private equity-backed group that billed a patient $1,100 for her share of a colonoscopy charge — about three times what she paid in another state.

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Investigating local weather alter and mental overall health

January 7, 2022 Vera

A youth walks over dried mud on the banks of a river after waters from the seasonal monsoon rains receded in Allahabad, India — A youth walks around dried mud on the banks of a river after waters from the seasonal monsoon rains receded in Allahabad, India. Picture by Prabhat Kumar Verma/Pacific Press/LightRocket by means of Getty Illustrations or photos

Scientists have explored the partnership concerning local weather modify and psychological health in a significant literature review.
The authors observed a significant amount of money of exploration demonstrating how climate adjust poses risks to mental health and fitness.
Nonetheless, they conclude that far more investigate is wanted to investigate how to mitigate these dangers.

A significant literature evaluation highlights the connections that researchers have located amongst weather transform and psychological health and fitness.

The assessment, which appears in the Intercontinental Journal of Environmental Exploration and Public Health and fitness, demonstrates that local weather alter is a main danger to people’s psychological health and fitness.

Nevertheless, most exploration on this subject has concentrated on creating perception into the worth of these hazards but not mitigating them.

The authors phone for ongoing investigation in this developing industry, with a individual emphasis on defending people’s psychological wellness from the threats posed by weather alter.

Researchers have argued that human-motivated local climate adjust poses an existential menace to civilization, with a lot of linked ecological, social, political, financial, and health and fitness risks.

In conditions of human health, there is a wealth of study exploring the adverse actual physical wellbeing results of local weather transform.

On the other hand, there has been less investigation into the outcomes of climate improve on psychological overall health.

Talking to Health care News Nowadays, Prof. Tahseen Jafry, director of the Centre for Local climate Justice at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, reported that this lack of exploration was significantly the situation concerning people’s experience in reduced-money nations.

“Globally, there is very small study that pays attention to the psychological well being impacts of climate modify, specially in the poorest nations.”

“The deficiency of qualitative details concerning on-the-ground realities and lived experiences, notably from the poorest countries in the globe, helps make this just one of the most prolific and the very least comprehended areas of examine,” reported Prof. Jafry.

The authors of the evaluate have been particularly interested to see if they could connect preceding analysis to 5 research priorities for shielding health in the confront of local weather alter, which the World Wellness Corporation (WHO)

Health officials investigating cluster of rare Legionnaires’ disease cases in New York

October 22, 2021 Vera

Health officials on Long Island are investigating 10 reported cases of Legionnaires’ disease — a rare form of pneumonia caused by a bacteria called Legionella. The source of the cluster has yet to be identified, but New York is seeing an uptick in Legionnaires cases statewide, the Nassau County Department of Health said.

The 10 cases of the disease, first identified in October, have been reported within a one-mile radius in a Long Island neighborhood, the county’s health department said. According to CBS New York, medical teams are working on contact tracing, as well as swabbing and sampling on site to find the cases’ origins.

The cluster of cases include people between the ages of 35 and 96. As of Saturday, one person has died from Legionnaires, two are hospitalized and seven have been released from the hospital, CBS New York reported.

People can contract Legionnaires by breathing in a mist or vapor containing the Legionella bacteria, which occur naturally in the environment, according to the county health department. Legionella are commonly found in fountains, spray parks, hot tubs, showers and faucets. The disease is not spread from person to person, the health department said.

In 2018, there were nearly 10,000 cases of Legionnaires reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the number of cases could have been 2.7 times higher than what was reported because it is often misdiagnosed as one of the more common forms of pneumonia, the CDC said.

Symptoms of Legionnaires typically begin between two to 10 days after exposure to the bacteria and include shortness of breath, high fever, cough, muscle aches and headache. The disease usually lasts between two to five days and can range from a mild cough to a “rapidly fatal” case of pneumonia, according to the World Health Organization. Complications from the disease can include respiratory failure, shock and acute kidney failure.

The general death rate for the disease ranges from 5 to 10%, and typically depends on how severe of a case it is, where the disease was acquired, and if the patient has preexisting conditions. Those over the age of 50, current and past smokers, those with chronic lung disease and immunocompromised people are at higher risk of coming down with Legionnaires, the Nassau County Department of Health said.

Those with Legionnaires are usually treated with antibiotics, and