Growing consolidation amongst hospitals, doctor practices, and different well being care entities is driving up well being care costs. On the similar time, rising corporatization of well being care makes it more and more onerous to uncover which entities personal or management a well being care apply or different well being care entity. As state policymakers grapple with excessive and rising industrial well being care costs, they confirmed a rising curiosity throughout 2025 legislative classes in leveraging possession transparency as a instrument to higher perceive their altering well being care markets, strengthen oversight efforts, and inform customers.
Payments to extend the transparency of possession and management of well being care entities had been launched in no less than eight states in 2025, and made it throughout the end line in 4 of them. The rise in state policymakers’ curiosity and exercise seemingly displays a number of interrelated elements, together with:
This weblog publish examines the position of state possession transparency inside broader reform efforts and evaluations possession transparency-related legal guidelines handed in 2025 in Massachusetts, Indiana, New Mexico, and Washington, in addition to payments thought-about, however not enacted, in Maine, Minnesota, Texas, and Vermont.
Function of possession transparency
Who owns or controls a doctor apply, hospital, and different suppliers—and their vested monetary pursuits—can impression costs charged, providers provided, high quality, and entry to care, but it may be onerous or unimaginable to know which entities personal or management a well being care apply or facility. An online of advanced company constructions amongst interrelated entities can obscure the possession or controlling pursuits of particular person practices or services, in addition to general traits in consolidation in well being care markets. Current information sources on possession have gaps, and there’s no full, publicly accessible information supply with possession info for doctor practices.
States typically gather some possession info as a part of state licensure of, for instance, hospitals and well being insurers. Some states go additional, amassing further info to leverage possession transparency as a instrument for monitoring and understanding their altering well being care markets. Possession transparency efforts, the place they exist, typically require: (1) annual or periodic reporting, and/or (2) reporting triggered by proposed adjustments, comparable to mergers and acquisitions. These two constructions serve totally different functions and may be complementary:
- Annual reporting allows an possession registry that may present info—some or a lot of it in any other case unknowable—to a number of varieties of customers. It may, for instance, enable a person affected person to be taught whether or not their physician’s workplace is owned or managed by a hospital, an insurance coverage conglomerate, Amazon, personal fairness, or different company entities. Annual reporting can even assist reveal the diploma of consolidation in well being care markets immediately and the character of relationships between entities. This may inform state policymakers, regulators, and researchers searching for to higher perceive their markets or restrict anticompetitive practices. Massachusetts has the longest-standing mannequin for this strategy that requires a spread of supplier organizations to systematically report possession and management info regularly, which the state then makes publicly accessible.
- Notices of proposed transactions alert states to impending or potential adjustments to possession or management. They will present info crucial for state certificates of want or pre-transaction assessment and oversight packages. Notices may be made public or stored confidential. Even in states that lack authority to administratively assessment or approve/reject proposed well being care transactions, a broad requirement for well being care entities to supply advance discover of transactions permits the state to trace patterns of consolidation and totally leverage present state antitrust authority. Not less than 35 states require hospitals, and in some instances, different well being care entities, to supply discover of sure proposed transactions or adjustments.
Transparency alone can not forestall dangerous consolidation nor deal with anti-competitive conduct, as higher calibrated instruments can. However transparency supplies insights into altering well being care markets and may function a basis for or complement to further methods to handle consolidation and management the expansion in industrial well being care costs.
Massachusetts’ Registration of Supplier Organizations (MA-RPO) program requires supplier organizations that meet sure income and affected person thresholds to yearly file possession, monetary, and different info with related state companies. As well as, giant suppliers should submit a discover of fabric change 60 days earlier than proposed adjustments, together with mergers and acquisitions. This info informs the state’s market oversight and evaluation capabilities, and Massachusetts publicly posts the supplier registry information and materials change notices to permit policymakers, researchers, and market individuals to know and enhance the state’s well being care system.
The 2024 collapse of Steward Well being Care, which stemmed partially from destabilizing personal fairness ways, supplied a stress take a look at for these state packages and uncovered just a few blind spots. In response, Massachusetts enacted a legislation in January 2025 that, amongst different provisions, closed loopholes that had successfully exempted many personal fairness and company buyers from supplier transparency and oversight necessities. The legislation extends MA-RPO reporting necessities to incorporate new info associated to personal fairness buyers, actual property funding trusts, and administration providers organizations, and will increase the penalties for failing to report info from $1,000 per week to $25,000 per week. The legislation additionally provides particular transactions– comparable to personal fairness taking possession or management of a supplier group and a major switch of belongings, together with the sale and subsequent lease-back of a well being care supplier’s actual property –to the state’s checklist of fabric adjustments that require an advance discover.
Indiana enacted a slate of well being care value containment payments in 2025, together with HB 1666, which requires a spread of well being care entities that function in Indiana to report possession info to the state regularly. The same invoice didn’t cross the 12 months earlier than. The legislation applies broadly to well being care suppliers (although sure practitioner-owned practices are exempted) together with well being insurers, well being upkeep organizations (HMOs), third-party directors (TPAs), and pharmacy profit managers (PBMs). These entities should typically disclose the entities or people who maintain an possession or controlling curiosity or curiosity as a non-public fairness companion to an relevant state company. Hospitals, insurers, HMOs, TPAs, and PBMs should report yearly and are topic to fines for noncompliance. Well being care suppliers aside from hospitals should report each different 12 months and should not topic to fines.
The Division of Well being should compile the possession info reported to numerous state companies into an annual report and publish it on-line. As filed, the invoice would have made this possession info publicly accessible, however as handed, it incorporates broad exclusions. The state could omit the identify of an individual or entity that holds an possession stake in any well being care entity, in addition to possession info that’s not broadly accessible to most of the people. It stays to be seen whether or not the knowledge launched beneath this legislation may, for instance, assist an individual perceive which entity owns or controls their physician’s apply. The Division of Well being can, nonetheless, share possession info with the Workplace of Lawyer Normal, which is permitted beneath this legislation to research the market focus of a well being care entity at any time, along with its present authority associated to well being care antitrust investigations.
In April, New Mexico enacted a legislation to increase and increase expiring state regulatory authority from the Well being Care Consolidation Oversight Act handed the earlier 12 months. HB 586 authorizes state regulators to supervise proposed transactions, together with a change in possession or management of a hospital, a change in command of the true property on which a hospital is situated, and the acquisition of an impartial supplier apply by an insurer or its associates. The up to date legislation provides transparency provisions that the prior model lacked. It requires the New Mexico Well being Care Authority to publicly publish discover of and take public touch upon proposed transactions. The company should additionally yearly publish hospital possession on its web site and supply updates when there are adjustments to a hospital’s possession or the true property on which it stands. HB 586 handed on the heels of the failure of a separate oversight invoice that included extra strong reporting on possession and management of well being care entities.
Washington enacted a legislation that lays the groundwork for future possession transparency. The preamble of the brand new legislation explains that Washington is presently ill-equipped to watch traits in its well being care market, together with vital consolidation amongst well being care entities and a pointy enhance in personal fairness acquisitions, and perceive their impacts on well being care entry and affordability.
The legislation directs the Division of Well being, in session with different state companies, to develop a plan for a “full and interactive registry” that makes well being care entity possession and management clear. The Division should specify which entities ought to report (together with no less than well being programs, services, suppliers, insurers, and well being care profit managers) and what info must be collected. The legislation acknowledges the complexity in unearthing layers of often-obscured possession or management and requires methods to know direct and oblique possession and management (and adjustments to them) by monitoring company constructions, funding, and contractual relationships. The Division should submit a progress report back to the legislature by the top of 2027 and a remaining report by late 2028. Lawmakers allotted $500,000 for the biennium to develop the plan.
Lawmakers in Maine, Minnesota, Texas, and Vermont filed possession transparency payments in 2025 that didn’t in the end make it throughout the end line. These payments would have required sure well being care entities to report on their possession each yearly and after a cloth change, and knowledge would have been made publicly accessible. The payments would have typically required well being care entities to reveal the entities or people that maintain an possession, funding, or controlling curiosity in them, together with their vital fairness buyers and relationships with administration providers organizations.
The states that handed possession transparency payments so far in 2025 display that progress is feasible in states with starkly totally different political environments, although in some instances, solely after a multi-session effort. Laws thought-about in 2025 additionally reveals that states are responding to the growing corporatization of well being care by tailoring transparency necessities to seize which company actors exert management over a well being care entity’s operations or take possession of its actual property, even when they don’t immediately personal the well being care entity. Curiosity in possession transparency could proceed to develop as state policymakers search instruments to assist inform customers, management the expansion in well being care costs, and mitigate harms from consolidation in well being care markets.
