The traditional wisdom around physician practices is that there are two kinds: employed and independent. Employed groups are owned by health systems and serve the wider revenue goals of the system. Independent practices are owned by physician shareholders and aim to improve the group’s bottom line.

But this dichotomy no longer describes the market in 2024 and is inadequate to predict what to expect in 2025 and beyond. Here’s why:

Between January 2019 and January 2022, the rate of corporate ownership of practices grew 10 times faster than that of health system ownership.¹ In fact, more physician practices were owned by corporations than health systems as of January 2022. But as you can see in the graph below, after that tipping point, growth began to level out, with the pace of corporate acquisition slowing over the past two years.