Private equity’s relationship with physician groups is maturing. While deal volume has cooled since its 2021 peak—pressured by labor shortages, reimbursement cuts, and post-COVID realities—investor interest hasn’t disappeared. Instead, it has evolved. The old playbook of pure buy-and-build is giving way to a more sophisticated model: performance-driven, tech-enabled, clinician-aligned platforms built for long-term value and strategic exits. Today’s winning physician groups look less like loose networks of practices and more like integrated enterprises. Investors are prioritizing organic growth, repeatable ancillary strategies, and making physician groups “employers of choice”—not just acquisition vehicles. AI, analytics, and centralized infrastructure are now essential to…
Author: Abhay Panchal
Chronic constipation affects 8-12% of Americans, with 3 million patients per year seeking clinical evaluation. Although most patients with chronic constipation respond to medical therapy, a subset experiences refractory constipation, which poses unique diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. AGA’s new clinical practice update outlines 14 best-practice advice statements to support the diagnosis and management of refractory constipation. Watch as Drs. Kyle Staller and Leila Neshatian discuss key updates from the CPU.
GLP-1 receptor agonists may be superior to aspirin for primary prevention of colorectal cancer, according to study results presented at ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. A retrospective analysis of more than 281,000 people showed those who used GLP-1s exhibited a 36% reduced risk for colorectal cancer compared with those who used aspirin. The benefit with GLP-1s appeared even greater among individuals at highest risk due to family history, genetic predisposition or other high-risk comorbidities, such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.
Guardant Health, Inc. (Nasdaq: GH), a leading precision oncology company, today announced its Shield blood test for colorectal cancer screening (CRC) is now covered for active-duty service members and their families through TRICARE, the U.S. military’s health insurance coverage, with no copay for average-risk individuals ages 45 and older. Shield is the first and only blood test approved by the FDA as a primary screening option for CRC, offering U.S. military troops a more pleasant and convenient option for screening by overcoming barriers associated with other screening methods. According to the Department of Defense, there are approximately 1.3 million active-duty…
Gastroenterology in 2025 was not shaped by a single breakthrough or defining moment. It was shaped by pressure—rising demand, constrained capacity, shifting economics, and a growing gap between how the system was designed to work and how it actually functions in practice. Across screening, endoscopy, ownership models, site of care, innovation, and workforce sustainability, the specialty spent the year reassessing what still scales, what no longer does, and which assumptions quietly broke along the way. The clearest signal of that reassessment comes from the articles GI leaders returned to most often. The screening model began to fracture under its own…
From seismic policy shifts to blockbuster deals and the accelerating migration of higher-acuity care into the outpatient setting, 2025 was a defining year for the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) industry. ASC News readers gravitated toward stories that captured an industry in transition – one balancing rapid growth and innovation with mounting regulatory action, reimbursement pressures, and questions about scale, ownership and independence. Clinical evolution was another important theme. Readers showed strong interest in how emerging technologies such as surgical robotics are reshaping outpatient care, as well as how operators are rethinking patient selection, cardiovascular services and orthopedic growth to safely…
Remote patient monitoring is steadily reshaping chronic disease care, but its role in inflammatory bowel disease is only now coming into focus. This comprehensive review traces how connected technologies—ranging from home biomarker testing and wearable sensors to passive physiologic monitoring—are being adapted for IBD, drawing lessons from cardiology, endocrinology, and psychiatry. It highlights promising signals around earlier flare detection, patient engagement, and proactive care, while also confronting the unresolved challenges of adherence, regulation, reimbursement, and workflow integration. What emerges is not a finished solution, but a rapidly evolving model of care whose real impact on IBD management is still being…
Physician compensation may look straightforward on paper, but this piece argues that many clinicians enter high-stakes contract negotiations without understanding the very metrics that define their value. Focusing on work relative value units (wRVUs), fair market value, and benchmark data, the authors unpack how hospitals structure pay—and where physicians often lose leverage. As employment models shift and reimbursement pressures grow, the article reframes contract review not as confrontation, but as alignment. Why data literacy has become a career skill for physicians, and how it can materially change outcomes, is explored in this analysis from Healio.
In a large, pragmatic quality improvement program, investigators from the Department of Veterans Affairs showed that the availability of computer-aided detection systems improved adenoma detection rates over those seen at sites where CADe was not provided, although it did not affect all quality colonoscopy indicators. “The odds of adenoma detection improved by 22%. Significant improvements in ADR persisted compared to sites without CADe,” said Jason A. Dominitz, MD, the executive director of the Veterans Health Administration’s National Gastroenterology and Hepatology Program, and a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, in Seattle. However, the researchers also observed a long-term…
CMS released plans Dec. 23 for its voluntary “Better Approaches to Lifestyle and Nutrition for Comprehensive hEalth” — or BALANCE — model. The announcement comes weeks following the White House’s agreements with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to apply most-favored-nation pricing for drugs that treat obesity, diabetes and related conditions. “Today’s announcement builds upon our historic Most Favored Nations drug pricing deals’ goal of democratizing access to weight-loss medication, which has been out of reach for so many in need,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, MD, said in a news release.