\u201cmassive conflict of interest\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and the risks that insurer-owned practices start controlling what services GPs offer, Dr Mitchell is willing to believe the insurers are genuine.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s less expensive to pay for someone to see a GP every week for a year than to pay for them to be admitted to a hospital for just one day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe concerns of private hospitals and specialists that provide care in public and private hospitals around managed care are probably real.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for general practice, this is about leveraging what we think is good practice anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
The consultancy firm he co-founded, Medius Global, has begun tracking Australian GP practice ownership trends.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4x3_Chris_Mitchell.jpg\")
Dr Chris Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Dr Mitchell says Bupa purchasing Partnered Health from a private equity firm, Quadrant, follows a trend of private equity ownership of practices paving the way for private health ownership.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the absence of these groups, insurers would be making individual purchases, and that would have been more problematic.<\/p>\n
\u201cSigning a small group deal is strategically a much lower risk proposition for private health insurance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re also drawn by similar factors as private equity: this is a growing sector, and it\u2019s Federal Government-subsidised.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the \u201cstrategic alignment\u201d \u2014 insurers and patients both benefiting from quality primary care \u2014 put a premium on GP practices for insurers compared with private equity firms.<\/p>\n
Healthcare industry analyst Aishni Singh, from industry intelligence firm IBISWorld, agrees that the downstream benefits make primary care attractive to insurers, more so than private equity or corporate owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cVertical integration is a way to spread fixed costs, because it\u2019s all under one roof, and that can help improve profit margins,\u201d Ms Singh added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt cuts down on administrative costs, for instance, when you\u2019ve got the same patient paying their premiums and getting their care in the same network.\u201d<\/p>\n
Could smaller insurers follow Bupa and Medibank?<\/p>\n
Ms Singh said Bupa and Medibank\u2019s sizes would have played a role.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to our estimates, Bupa and Medibank account for just under half the private health insurance market,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeeping that in mind, they have the kind of scale and financial capital to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will the trend lead to GPs being told by their insurer bosses what treatments to provide or where to refer?<\/p>\n
Neither expert was willing to definitively call it.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegulators are going to be concerned,\u201d Dr Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think the sensible play for insurers is to give GPs tools to make it easier to deliver good care.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t see why an insurer would use a stick to make GPs do what they probably want to do anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is more the quality of the individual owner that concerns me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d rather be owned by a fantastic private equity firm than a terrible private health insurer.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I suspect there are more good private health insurers who could be potential owners than there are good private equity owners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bupa will take over 68 primary care clinics and three urgent care centres after announcing its purchase of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-677895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n