PRIVATE EQUITY OWNED
TeamHealth
Includes Team Health, Team Health Holdings, Southeastern Emergency Physicians
emergency medicine staffing · Knoxville, TN
- PE Firm
- Blackstone →
- Acquirer
- Blackstone Group
- Year Acquired
- 2017
Blackstone bought your ER doctor. Then they sued the patients.
What They Did
- Blackstone acquired TeamHealth for $6.1 billion in February 2017 — its second time owning the company after buying it in 2005, taking it public in 2009, and cashing out
- TeamHealth staffs nearly 1 in 10 emergency departments in the U.S. through 20,000+ affiliated physicians — when you see an ER doc, there's a decent chance Blackstone is their landlord
- After the acquisition, TeamHealth's subsidiary filed 4,800+ lawsuits against patients in Shelby County, TN alone — they only stopped suing the poor after NPR and ProPublica investigated in 2019
- A 2024 Senate probe pressed Blackstone, TeamHealth's owner, for records — Sen. Gary Peters' office had interviewed 40+ ER physicians who raised 'substantial concerns' about PE-owned staffing firms
Since the Acquisition
- Patients reported being sued for medical debt by TeamHealth subsidiaries even when they qualified for financial assistance — thousands of lawsuits targeted low-income patients in Tennessee
- Class action alleged TeamHealth ran two fraud schemes: upcoding non-physician services to physician rates, and billing for critical care that was never provided
Sources
- Senator Probes PE Physician Staffing Firms for Emergency Care Cost Cutting — Fierce Healthcare(2024-04-01)
- Why TeamHealth, Owned By Blackstone, Stopped Suing Poor Patients — NPR(2019-11-27)
- How Rich Investors, Not Doctors, Profit From Marking Up ER Bills — ProPublica(2019-11-27)
- TeamHealth to be Acquired by Blackstone for $6.1B — Healthcare Dive(2016-10-31)
- Chairman Peters' letter to Blackstone on TeamHealth — U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee(2024-04-01)