Private equity firms in partnership with real estate investment trusts known as “REITs” are increasingly buying up hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers to make outsized profits, according to research by ILR Professor Rosemary Batt and Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

In the study published Aug. 1 by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, they outline how investors are undermining the financial stability of health care institutions. They are selling off real estate and pocketing the proceeds, rather than reinvesting the money to improve patient care, said Appelbaum and Batt, ILR School’s Alice H. Cook Professor of Women and Work.

A full version of this story appears on the ILR website.
Mary Catt is the ILR School’s communications director.