Op-Ed: How Private Investment is Improving Tennessee’s Healthcare System
ROBERTSON COUNTY (Smokey Barn News) – In this op-ed, Jeff Atwood, a former healthcare executive and advocate for responsible private investment, discusses the critical role private capital is playing in improving healthcare access and innovation, particularly in rural communities. Drawing from his extensive experience in the Tennessee healthcare sector, Atwood challenges recent criticisms of private investment in the industry, presenting a perspective on how such investments are strengthening healthcare systems and preserving essential services for underserved areas.
Private investment in healthcare has emerged as a flashpoint in national policy debates, with critics concerned that for-profit ownership and investment in healthcare creates incentives that prioritize financial returns at the expense of patient care. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience as a Tennessee healthcare executive, this piece pushes back on critics and examines how responsibly deployed private capital can help our nation address critical challenges, such as the lack of healthcare in rural communities.
Private Capital’s Role in Healthcare
Across the country, state lawmakers and members of Congress are questioning the role of private capital investments in healthcare. These questions have been spurred in part by the collapse of a Massachusetts hospital chain that was caused by bad actors.
Before policymakers in states and Congress make any knee-jerk reactions to the negative headlines, they should pay a visit to Tennessee. Here, we have experienced firsthand how responsible private investment can strengthen local healthcare for patients and communities. Our experience shows that efforts to limit private capital in healthcare can do patients more harm than good.
Look at Tennessee, and you will see why we can be an example to the nation. Nashville has become home to more than a dozen private investment firms, each focused on improving healthcare and driving down costs. Private capital in our health-tech startup scene is helping to fund research into new treatments and cures, finding more efficient systems to streamline the business of health, and developing new ways to deliver care where it’s needed most.
As a former healthcare executive, I know the power of responsible capital investments. At what was then known as RCCH HealthCare Partners in Brentwood, I saw private capital investments do something vital: keep community hospitals strong. Across 16 regional health systems spanning 12 states, RCCH used private capital to maintain and improve healthcare facilities that might otherwise have closed their doors or shrunk their services.
At RCCH, our work was not about spreadsheets and returns — it was about ensuring communities continued to have health facilities on which they could count. Preserving access to healthcare matters now more than ever, especially for rural communities.
Over the past two decades, nearly 200 rural hospitals have closed. According to some estimates, more than 700 more are at risk. Behind these statistics are real patients facing longer drives for basic care, seniors struggling to find specialists, and communities watching their healthcare options disappear.
Private capital backs just 8 percent of all private hospitals, but a quarter of these hospitals are in rural communities. Research suggests that private capital is bringing the resources and expertise that these and other rural hospitals need to survive. According to a 2021 study by professors at Georgetown and the University of Indiana, private capital can improve hospitals’ operational efficiency “without compromising healthcare quality.” Those are precisely the outcomes policymakers should want.
It is not just hospitals where private capital is making a difference in rural healthcare. When longtime physicians retire — as many are doing across rural America — their practices often close and leave patients struggling to find a new doctor close by. Private investment can help prevent these closures by providing practices with resources to recruit new doctors or to fold the practice into larger networks.
Today, physicians aged 55 or older make up 44 percent of the workforce. That is a huge number of physicians nearing or at retirement. For rural communities that already face a healthcare shortage, this looming wave of retirements is a real threat, especially if policymakers put up roadblocks that prevent private capital from extending a lifeline to practices that want one.
Private capital investments are also helping to bring more urgent-care centers to rural communities. Since 2020, private investors have dedicated more than $15 billion to urgent care. Here in Tennessee, we’ve seen this investment firsthand with brands like Fast Pace. With the backing of private capital going back nearly a decade, Fast Pace has grown from 25 clinics in two states to more than 200 clinics across Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and Alabama.
The Fast Pace network and others like it now serve millions of rural Americans who would otherwise live in underserved communities. In Tennessee, the story is clear. Private capital investments drive health innovation and make healthcare more accessible.
As policymakers debate the role of private capital in healthcare, they should look beyond the headlines to Tennessee and see the value these investments bring. Rural and other healthcare challenges are too complex for soundbite solutions that will have unintended consequences for patients.
Jeff Atwood previously served as a senior vice president for two Nashville-based national healthcare systems. He currently writes, speaks, and serves as a board chair for a Nashville organization that serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
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The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Smokey Barn News.
