One in four emergency departments in the United States is now staffed by a private equity-owned physician group. Two corporate staffing giants, Envision and TeamHealth, have moved to control over half of all ER departments in the country. The story repeats itself everywhere: acquire the contract, cut physician hours, replace experienced doctors with lower-cost providers, and extract profit from the most critical point of care in the healthcare system. A September 2025 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine examined over 1 million ER visits across 49 private equity-owned hospitals and found that patient death rates rose by 13% after acquisition compared with similar independent ERs. As deaths rose, emergency department salary expenses dropped by an average of 18%. In April, 45 physicians at Valley Health in Winchester, Virginia, with a 25-year history of serving six hospitals, learned that their contracts had been terminated on a hospital-wide Zoom call. They had met or surpassed every performance metric. @ChelleWards and @tracybeanz break down what happened, what's driving it, and what it means for the doctor you'll see the next time you walk into an emergency room. Full article linked below 👇 bit.ly/ER-takeover