Methodology

Who Owns Your Care is a public-record database tracking the ownership of US healthcare providers. We start at the storefront, the clinic on your street, and walk backward through holding companies, management partnerships, fund vehicles, and the limited partners who put up the capital.

For each provider, we publish: who runs it day-to-day, who legally owns it, who owns that owner, and so on, as far as the public record permits. Every link in the chain cites a primary or corroborating source.

Every provider sits in one of three tiers, or is flagged as unknown until we have enough on the public record to place it. Tiers carry the editorial position. The specific type (PE-backed vs. VC-backed, nonprofit vs. physician-owned) appears on the badge for anyone who wants the precise category.

The badge on every provider names a specific type. Color comes from the tier; the label tells you the category.

We start every record at unknown. We don't promote a provider out of unknown until we can cite a public filing or a verified self-attestation.

This is intentional. The old default, “independent unless proven otherwise,” was a lie of convenience. Most providers are not independent. Most are not yet documented either way. Unknown tells the truth.

Each link in an ownership chain is backed by at least one primary source. Corroborating sources confirm timing and structure but never establish ownership on their own.

A typical ownership chain spans four to six entities. We build each chain by:

1. Confirming the provider's legal business name and license number with the state.
2. Identifying any “doing business as” (DBA) registrations.
3. Tracing the parent LLC or PLLC through state corporate registries.
4. Matching that entity to a platform or roll-up via M&A press releases, court filings, or deal databases.
5. Locating the PE sponsor on Form ADV or SEC adviser records.
6. Identifying the fund vehicle on Form D, and the LPs from public-pension and endowment commitment reports.

When a step cannot be confirmed by the public record, we leave it blank rather than guess. A grayed-out node in an ownership trace means “we believe this link exists but can't yet cite it.”

We want to be precise about what a tier does and does not say:

• It is not a clinical-quality rating.A Concern-tier provider may have excellent individual clinicians; an Aligned-tier provider may have a doctor you wouldn't choose.
• It is not a prediction.Today's tier doesn't guarantee tomorrow's. Ownership can change.
• It is not an attack on any individual. We classify ownership structures and documented patterns, not the people who work inside them.
• It is not, today, a measure of behavior. Within Concern tier especially, behavior varies widely. When the public record contains evidence (post-acquisition pricing, complaints, regulatory action), we surface it as an editorial note under the badge. When it doesn't, the tier stands on its own.

If you spot an error (a wrong date, a missing link in a chain, a misclassified provider) please send a correction via the form linked on every detail page. We log every correction request and respond before publishing the change.

If you have a tip (you work or worked at a provider, you see a deal that hasn't been written up, you have documents that would close a gap) we accept submissions over a secure channel.

Who Owns Your Care is an independent public-interest research project. It is run by a small group of researchers, journalists, and clinicians who believe patients have a right to know who profits from their care.

The project has no commercial relationship with any provider, fund, or advocacy organization. The database is free to read. Code and source citations are open.