In late August the release of a report by US senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) on the destruction of hospitals in his home state of Connecticut, and across the US by private equity companies highlights once again the negative effect of this form of investment.
The report documented what happened when three Connecticut hospitals—Waterbury Hospital, Rockville General, and Manchester Memorial—were bought by Prospect Medical Holdings, a company that since 2010 had been owned by private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners.
Extensive employee testimony in the report told of how Prospect went to extreme lengths to avoid spending money, including delaying and stopping paying suppliers leading to a lack of equipment and disposables for treatment and surgery, and even a lack of food for patients, maintenance of buildings was neglected, which in two instances led to ceilings collapsing.
The deterioration of patient care at Waterbury became obvious by 2019, when the report noted that it “recorded the highest rates of patient readmission in the state.”
Things got even worse for the hospitals when Leonard Green & Partners decided to sell the land the hospitals were built on to a real estate investment firm. The firm then leased the land back to Prospect at high rates. When Leonard Green sold off its stake in Prospect the report said it left “nothing but debt and destruction” in its wake.
Prospect itself filed for bankruptcy earlier in 2025, and the fate of all three hospitals is now “in the hands of a bankruptcy judge in Texas,” the report added.
Full article in The Lowdown, 2 September 2025
