Kaiser’s Permanente tops list of 10 largest medical group owners

IQVIA's annual report of the largest parent companies of medical groups has Kaiser Permanente remaining on top, beating the second-ranked system by nearly 10,000 unique physicians.

Kaiser’s Permanente Medical Group has 19,179 total physician affiliations and 14,757 unique physicians at its 578 medical groups spread across nine states. The number of doctors it employs per site ranks Kaiser above systems which have far more offices, like kidney dialysis chains DaVita (2,813 sites) and Fresenius (2,476 sites) as well as the largest integrated system in the country, Ascension Health (1,136 sites), and the Veterans Health Administration (690 sites).

“All told, the 50 organizations that comprise this chart own and manage about 20,757 medical group sites and employ, by our estimates, 102,600 physicians,” the report said.

Here are the top 10 medical group owners on the list in order of total employed physicians:

1. Kaiser Permanente (14,757 physicians at 578 sites)
2. Veterans Health Administration (4,798 physicians at 690 sites)
3. Mayo Clinic (4,733 physicians at 128 sites)
4. Ascension Health (4,218 physicians at 1,136 sites)
5. University of California (UC) Health (4,124 physicians at 397 sites)
6. Fresenius (3,229 physicians at 2,476 sites)
7. Providence St. Joseph Health (3,054 physicians at 573 sites)
8. DaVita (2,737 physicians at 2,813 sites)
9. Trinity Health (2,551 physicians at 607 sites)
10. Catholic Health Initiatives (2,473 physicians at 766 sites)

Notably, several owners in the group have been involved in mergers and acquisitions activity over the past year: Catholic Health Initiatives signed a definitive merger agreement with Dignity Health (ranked 26^th on the list), DaVita sold its medical group division to UnitedHealth’s Optum unit and Ascension announced plans to acquire Chicago-based Presence Health while reportedly being in talks to merge with Providence St. Joseph.

The report also listed the top specialties employed at these medical sites. The top 10 were:

1. Family medicine (86,155 physicians at 46,922 sites)
2. Internal medicine (62,210 physicians at 35,459 sites)
3. Pediatrics (41,845 physicians at 19,796 sites)
4. Obstetrics and gynecology (29,661 physicians at 15,047 sites)
5. Cardiology (17,476 physicians at 9,233 sites)
6. Psychiatry (16,938 physicians at 9,911 sites)
7. Orthopedic surgery (16,282 physicians at 8,265 sites)
8. General surgery (15,067 physicians at 9,132 sites)
9. Ophthalmology (14,573 physicians at 8,110 sites)
10. Anesthesiology (11,736 physicians at 3,575 sites)