Health Equity & Access Weekly Roundup: May 29, 2026

Private Equity Oversight Gaps Threaten Patient Safety, ACP Warns

Rapidly growing private equity (PE) investment in health care—rising from $41.5 billion in 2010 to nearly $120 billion in 2019—has outpaced federal oversight and may be harming patient care, warns a new position paper from the American College of Physicians (ACP). Published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the paper urges lawmakers and regulators to strengthen transparency requirements, antitrust enforcement, and protections for physicians’ clinical autonomy. The recommendations are supported by recent research showing worse patient outcomes at PE-owned hospitals, including increases in hospital-acquired conditions, patient falls, bloodstream infections, and emergency department (ED) mortality, which researchers linked in part to staffing cuts implemented after acquisitions. The ACP also highlights how PE firms often avoid federal antitrust review through “roll-up” strategies involving smaller acquisitions that fall below reporting thresholds, allowing firms to consolidate large shares of specialty care markets with limited scrutiny.

Health Outcomes of Socially Vulnerable Populations in Different Medicare Payment Arrangements

Medicare Advantage (MA) plans using 2-sided risk, value-based care arrangements delivered higher-quality and more efficient care than fee-for-service (FFS) MA and traditional Medicare (TM), particularly for beneficiaries living in socially vulnerable communities, according to a retrospective cohort study published in The American Journal of Managed Care^®. Researchers analyzed data from more than 1.7 million Medicare beneficiaries and found that at-risk MA plans were associated with fewer hospital admissions, ED visits, inpatient admissions through the ED, and high-risk medication use, with the strongest improvements seen among patients in high Social Vulnerability Index areas.

Compared with TM, at-risk MA beneficiaries in highly vulnerable communities experienced up to 16.6% fewer acute admissions and 30% lower use of high-risk medications. The findings suggest that value-based care models emphasizing care coordination, preventive care, and shared financial accountability may be especially beneficial for populations facing greater social and economic barriers to care, although the authors note that additional research is needed to determine which specific components of these models drive the improved outcomes.

New Jersey, Where Cancer Care Choice Abounds, Puts Patients at the Center

At an Institute for Value-Based Medicine® event in Princeton, New Jersey, oncology leaders from institutions including Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, John Theurer Cancer Center, and Penn Medicine discussed how cancer care in New Jersey has evolved into a highly advanced, patient-centered ecosystem that increasingly delivers cutting-edge therapies and clinical trials close to home.

Panelists emphasized proactive care coordination, remote monitoring, multidisciplinary support, and expanded access to therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy and bispecific antibodies while working to reduce disparities in underserved communities. Speakers highlighted efforts to improve diversity in clinical trial enrollment by loosening restrictive eligibility criteria, expanding community-based trial sites, building institutional trust, and addressing barriers such as transportation, language access, and financial toxicity. Oncology pharmacists were also recognized as increasingly central to cancer care delivery, helping manage complex therapies, prior authorizations, patient education, and cost considerations as personalized oncology treatments continue to grow more sophisticated and expensive.

ATS 2026 Features Expert Insight Into Top Thoracic Issues, Including Global Disparities

Climate change, social determinants of health, and evolving rehabilitation strategies are reshaping pulmonary and thoracic care worldwide, according to experts speaking at the American Thoracic Society 2026 International Conference. Speakers discussed evidence linking historical redlining, poverty, heat waves, wildfire smoke, and air pollution to worse respiratory outcomes, particularly in vulnerable communities, with Mary B. Rice, MD, MPH, director of the BIDMC Institute for Lung Health at Harvard University, emphasizing that climate-related exposures are increasingly reversing decades of air-quality improvements and disproportionately affecting patients with conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The conference also explored expanding the use of pulmonary rehabilitation beyond COPD, including for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension, where studies presented by Dmitry Rozenberg, MD, PhD, a respirologist at University Health Network, showed supervised rehabilitation can improve exercise capacity and quality of life without increasing adverse events. Overall, the meeting underscored growing attention to health equity, environmental risks, and multidisciplinary approaches to improving lung health outcomes globally.

Medicare FFS Patients More Likely to Receive Broad Genomic Profiling

Medicare FFS beneficiaries with metastatic cancer were slightly more likely than MA beneficiaries to receive broad genomic profiling (BGP), a guideline-recommended tool used to identify targeted cancer treatments, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed data from more than 254,000 Medicare patients diagnosed with 1 of 10 common metastatic solid tumors between 2020 and 2022 and found BGP use in 25.8% of FFS beneficiaries compared with 24.6% of MA beneficiaries. Usage was highest among patients with lung, pancreatic, and colorectal cancers, but rates varied substantially across geographic regions, ranging from about 14% to 38%.

The authors noted that MA plans’ emphasis on cost control may contribute to barriers in accessing advanced cancer diagnostics and warned that underuse of BGP could delay treatment decisions and worsen outcomes. They concluded that incorporating appropriate BGP use into value-based payment and quality programs, along with targeted education initiatives, could help improve equitable access to precision oncology nationwide.