Private equity ownership of hospitals can generate significant profits for investors. However, this focus on financial gain can jeopardize patients, communities, and healthcare providers.

The Hill is a publication that examines government operations and the intersection of politics and business. Heather Prendergast shares her insights based on a twenty-year career in Chicago emergency departments.

She recounts the consequences of hospitals closing in neighborhoods reliant on them. The closure results in ambulances covering greater distances, overcrowded waiting rooms, and patients presenting with more severe conditions due to delayed care.

Prendergast highlights her unexpected realization that hospitals might close not due to community incapacity to sustain them, but because their assets promise higher returns if utilized differently.