When Private Equity Firms Buy Nursing Homes, Patient Death Rates Climb

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KQED

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

As private equity companies have increasingly bought up nursing homes across the country, many are experiencing an alarming trend: higher death rates for patients. Stanford medical student turned journalist Yasmine Rafiei dug deep into what happened at one such facility, St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged in Richmond, Virginia, in a recent article in The New Yorker. Her article details how the experience and quality of life changed for residents as the new owners cut costs. She joins us to talk about her investigation. Guests: Charlene Harrington, professor emerita, School of Nursing at UCSF Medical School Yasmin Rafiei, reporter in residence, the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley; medical student, Stanford University on leave; author, recent New Yorker article, “When Private Equity Takes Over a Nursing Home” Sponsored Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho La Puerta, a wellness resort in Baja, California, just an hour from San Diego.
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0:44.6	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:01.0	One thing we've been tracking here is the way that private equity firms have moved in on our health care system,
1:07.0	snatching up urology practices and pediatricians, and also nursing homes.
1:11.6	Yasmine Rafi was a medical student at Stanford when she saw a study
1:15.6	that showed that after a private equity firm bought a nursing home,
1:18.6	deaths among residents went up an average of 10%.
1:21.6	She found it grotesque and startling enough that she suspended her studies
1:25.6	and spent the past year learning exactly how a nursing home changes when private equity buys it.
1:31.8	She published her findings in a major investigation in The New Yorker, and she joins us.
2:01.6	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. A few years ago, St. Joseph's home for the aged was a model, old school nursing home in Richmond, Virginia. It was run by the little sisters of the poor in order of none who'd been running facilities for decades with a familial touch.
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