The appeal to the free market also papered over another inconvenient reality of the medical economy: doctors were consolidating, too. Just as Parkview bought out the Bryan Medical Group, practices were selling themselves to health systems, hedge funds, private equity (PE) firms. And every one of those investors had the expectation—and sometimes the requirement—that doctors would send patients to a hospital preferred by the investors. That’s one reason hospitals wanted staff doctors—and why Ennen wanted to open the specialty clinics.
