Does your doctor really work for a venture capital firm

Some of the docs who see you in the ER,or read your imaging study, or give you Propofol for an endoscopy may well be the employees of a company that is owned by venture capital companies such as KKR.And if you have been hit by a big surprise medical bill because the ER doc for example is not part of the network your insurance covers it is even more likely .Apparently at least some  medical staffing companies owned by venture capital companies are accused of being heavily into balance billing.The names  Envision and EmCare come to mind.

Dr.Roy Poses had published an excellent report entitled "Who advocates for surprise medical billing?" on this topic on his blog, Health Care Renewal.See here for some eye-opening information.

Emergency room physicians are often supplied by physician staffing firms, such as Envision and EMcare.

 According to the HCR blog commentary these two are said to be  owned by  the global investment firm KKR.However the entry on Wikepedia on EmCare gives a different description of the various buyout and mergers surrounding EMcare not mentioning KKR.In any event we are talking about the corporate practice of medicine which is still not legal (although various states have exemptions of the rule) in some states. EmCare operates in 42 states.Envision, however, was acquired by KKR in 2018 for 9.9 billion.It is more complicated than that as Em Care through a series of buyouts  may have actually become Envison.Whatever may be the history of these company's buyout name changes, the point is that  venture capital companies own corporate entities that in turn supply physicians in various roles- i.e.ER docs,anesthesia services and even ICU doctors.So in the interest of transparency those doctors could have white coats with the logo of KKR.

The wide spread operations of companies such as these does not mean that laws restricting the corporate practice of medicine are no longer enforced  even  though their control of medical practice have greatly decreased..For recent examples of medical practices and non physicians owners getting caught by corporate practice law see here.

The basis of the corporate practice doctrine is usually said to be the conflict between the fiduciary obligation of the corporation to its shareholders to maximize profit  and the fiduciary role of the physician to the patients.

It does not take much imagination to think of situations in which what is good for the corporate bottom line does not correspond to what is good for the patients.