About 8% of medical groups were acquired by another entity in the year covered by MGMA's September 2025 poll of 421 group leaders, and 85% reported no ownership change at all. Offers are far more common than sales: 94% of independent practice leaders in a March 2026 Veradigm survey of 360 leaders said they had been approached about acquisition or consolidation in the past two years.
What MGMA's poll found
MGMA Stat polled medical group leaders on September 23, 2025 and received 421 applicable responses. The question asked what ownership change, if any, the leader's organization had seen this year.
| Answer | Share of 421 respondents |
|---|---|
| No ownership change | 85% |
| Acquired by another entity | 8% |
| Bought another practice | 3% |
| Other | 3% |
| Merger | 2% |
Source: MGMA Stat, September 23, 2025. Percentages do not total 100% because of rounding.
Being acquired was the most common change, at 8%. Buying another practice (3%) and merging (2%) were rarer. For a group of 50 practices, 8% is about four sales in a year.
How often owners get approached
Veradigm surveyed 360 leaders of independent ambulatory practices in March 2026: 210 physicians and clinical leaders and 150 practice managers and administrators. Medical Economics reported the results on May 6, 2026.
Of the 360 leaders, 94% received at least one acquisition or consolidation approach in the past two years. A third (33%) received four or more. About 26% went on to serious negotiations before they chose to stay independent. And 69% said they were extremely or very confident that their practice would still be independent in three to five years.
| Measure | Result | Source and base |
|---|---|---|
| Approached in past two years | 94% | Veradigm, 360 leaders, March 2026 |
| Approached four or more times | 33% | Veradigm, 360 leaders, March 2026 |
| Reached serious negotiations, then stayed independent | 26% | Veradigm, 360 leaders, March 2026 |
| Acquired by another entity this year | 8% | MGMA Stat, 421 responses, September 2025 |
The two surveys cover different groups, years and time spans, so the rows are not one funnel. They do show that most approaches end without a sale: nearly every leader got an offer, and about one in twelve groups changed hands by acquisition.
The cost pressure behind the offers
Veradigm asked what threatens independence most. Increased operating costs led at 46%. Administrative and regulatory burden followed at 39%, and reimbursement pressure at 38%.
Fifty-four percent of the full sample reported more financial pressure over the past year. Among practices with 40 or more clinicians that share was 82%, and 60% of those larger practices called the increase significant.
MGMA's June 30, 2026 poll of 221 respondents showed the same squeeze in revenue. In that poll, 47% of groups reported year-to-date revenue above the same period in 2025, 14% reported about the same, 36% reported a decrease and 2% were unsure. A year earlier, in a June 17, 2025 poll of 269 respondents, 56% reported an increase, 13% flat and 30% a decline. In the 2026 poll, 84% of groups said year-to-date costs were higher than in 2025.
Where ownership stood in 2024
The AMA's 2024 Physician Practice Benchmark Survey went to a sample of 5,000 physicians. It found that 42.2% worked in practices wholly owned by physicians, against 60.1% in 2012 when the survey began. The AMA's report says that was 18 percentage points lower than in 2012.
| Ownership of the practice | 2012 | 2020 | 2022 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Private practice (wholly physician-owned) | 60.1% | 49.1% | 46.7% | 42.2% |
| Hospital-owned | 23.4% | 30.5% | 31.3% | 34.5% |
| Private equity-owned | n/a | 4.4% | 4.5% | 6.5% |
| Direct hospital employee or contractor | 5.6% | 9.3% | 9.6% | 12.2% |
Source: AMA, Physician Practice Characteristics in 2024, Exhibit 1. The AMA first measured private equity ownership in 2020.
Other AMA measures moved the same way. Owners were 35.4% of physicians in 2024, down from 53.2% in 2012, and employees rose from 41.8% to 57.5%. Physicians in practices of 10 or fewer made up 47.4%, the first reading below half, against 61.4% in 2012.
A yearly sale rate of 8% in the MGMA poll and a 17.9 point drop in private practice share over twelve years are consistent. Small yearly shares add up over a decade.
The AMA also asked 2,027 physicians in hospital-owned, private equity-owned or insurer-owned practices when their practice was sold. Overall, 41.6% said before 2015, 15.3% said 2015 to 2019, 15.1% said after 2019 and 28.0% did not know. The split by buyer is wide: 38.3% of physicians in private equity-owned practices (N=327) said the sale came after 2019, against 10.0% of those in hospital-owned practices (N=1,626).
What the numbers mean for administrators
A practice that gets an offer needs its own figures before it can judge the price. Veradigm found that only 24% of respondents had high or complete visibility into where revenue leaks, through denials, underpayments and slow collections. The same survey found that 68% had only moderate or limited visibility into accounts receivable, and 29% reported limited or no visibility into revenue leakage.
Denial timing is part of that gap. In the same survey, 41% of practices did not learn about a denied claim for one to two weeks, and 8% received real-time denial notifications. Forty-eight percent reported rising denial volumes.
Sources
- MGMA, MGMA Stat: Who's buying, who's selling, ownership poll, September 24, 2025
- MGMA, MGMA Stat: Revenue growth narrows as costs climb, July 2, 2026
- MGMA, MGMA Stat: The race for more revenue in medical groups, June 18, 2025
- Medical Economics, 4 in 5 independent practices say this is what's keeping them independent, May 6, 2026
- Veradigm, The State of Independent Practice in 2026, 2026
- American Medical Association, Physician Practice Characteristics in 2024, May 2025
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