Private equity has poured billions of dollars into US concierge and direct primary care (DPC) platforms over the past decade [1][2][3][8].
Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Charlesbank Capital Partners, Blue Sea Capital, Shore Capital Partners, and Revelstoke Capital Partners all directly own equity in a concierge or DPC platform today. The category that started 25 years ago as a handful of physicians capping their patient panels and charging an annual membership is now one of the most actively traded segments in healthcare services. Johns Hopkins research published in December 2025 documents that fee-based primary care is rising rapidly nationwide, raising new policy and access questions [16].
By most standards the concierge and private medical market is relatively early, however the amount of PE is growing dramatically.
In the last twelve months alone, Revelstoke Capital made its first concierge platform acquisition, an Acrisure-principal-backed rollup hired the former National Group President of Surgery Partners as its CEO, and the joint owners of MDVIP, the largest concierge network in the country, entered Year 5 of their hold [4][5][6]. Year 5 is when PE funds start preparing for an exit. Whoever buys MDVIP next will reset the price comparison for every concierge transaction that follows.
This article maps who owns what, how they got there, and what the next 18 to 24 months look like for patients, physicians, and the practices on the State of Private Medicine 2026 annual report.
The MDVIP Cycle: A Multi-Decade Case Study in Concierge Consolidation
MDVIP is the canonical reference. It is the largest concierge network in the United States, with approximately 1,100 primary care physicians serving 362,000 patient members across 44 states, per Charlesbank's investment-page disclosure [2]. It is also a textbook PE asset, having changed hands repeatedly across 17 years and four transactions.
Owner | Period | Transaction | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
Summit Partners (minority) | 2004 to 2009 | Initial growth-equity investment | [15] |
Procter & Gamble | May 2009 to May 2014 | Strategic corporate ownership | [15] |
Summit Partners (majority recap) | May 2014 to November 2017 | Reacquired from P&G | [15] |
Leonard Green & Partners | November 2017 to October 2021 | Buyout (Summit retained minority) | [17] |
Goldman Sachs Asset Management + Charlesbank Capital Partners | October 2021 to present | Co-control buyout, equal ownership and shared governance [2] | [1][2] |
Each transition reset the price the market was willing to pay for a concierge platform. The 2014 Summit reacquisition signaled a PE buyer was willing to take MDVIP back from a $250 billion strategic owner. The 2017 Leonard Green deal validated a major buyout fund's appetite for the model. The 2021 Goldman + Charlesbank deal brought two institutional sponsors into joint control of the asset [1][2].
Goldman and Charlesbank are now in their fifth year of ownership. PE funds of this vintage typically hold for five to seven years before running an exit process. A 2026 or 2027 banker process at MDVIP is the single most important catalyst on the concierge medicine calendar. The buyer in that next round, whether a larger PE firm, a strategic acquirer like a national insurer or pharmacy chain, or a continuation vehicle that lets Goldman roll the asset forward, will publish the comparable price that every other concierge transaction will be measured against [7].
Four Models of Private Equity Capital in Concierge Today
PE has not entered concierge medicine through one door. It has entered through four, each with a different relationship to the practicing physician.
1. Pure affiliation networks
The simplest model. The physician keeps full ownership of the practice and pays the platform a fee for branding, marketing, lead generation, billing technology, and a national network. MDVIP and SignatureMD are the two largest examples. SignatureMD itself is owned by Blue Sea Capital, a West Palm Beach-based PE firm, after Blue Sea merged SignatureMD with two competitors (Paragon Private Health and Cypress Membership Medicine) in 2020 [8].
For patients, an affiliation network looks like a national brand on the door of an otherwise independent practice. The economics flow primarily to the local physician.
2. Majority-buyout rollups
The PE firm acquires a controlling stake in a physician-owned practice. The original founder typically rolls a portion of equity into the new holding company and continues to practice, often with a multi-year employment agreement attached. Cash leaves the founder's pocket up front. Future growth flows mostly to the PE sponsor and its investors.
Shore Capital Partners owns Specialdocs Consultants, a leading concierge conversion firm that helps individual physicians transition from insurance-based practice to a concierge model [9]. Revelstoke Capital Partners, a Denver-based healthcare-exclusive PE firm with $5.5 billion under management, acquired its first concierge platform in September 2025 in the Tampa, Florida area [4]. Revelstoke completed its 200th transaction shortly before that deal [3]. A first concierge investment of that size is almost never a static one. Industry observers should expect Southeast US concierge tuck-in acquisitions onto that platform in the next 18 months.
3. Equity-partnership consolidators
A newer model that did not exist before 2022 in its current form. The platform takes an equity stake in the partner practice but lets the physician retain clinical autonomy and operational control of their location. The platform provides shared infrastructure: a custom electronic health record (EHR), centralized marketing, legal and compliance support, human resources support, and access to a peer network of partner practices. The physician trades part of their equity for the chance to join a consolidating platform that can be sold at a future valuation event.
The category-defining example today is LifeSpanMD, a Naples, Florida-based platform founded in 2022 and backed by principal capital from Acrisure co-founder and CEO Greg Williams together with the DeYonker family. LifeSpanMD calls its model "Entrepreneurial Equity" and had aggregated 20 partner practices across 16 states plus Ontario, Canada by April 2026 [5][10]. In October 2025, LifeSpanMD hired Harrison Bane, who had previously served as National Group President of Surgery Partners (a Bain Capital-owned, NASDAQ-listed network of 180+ surgery centers across 33 states), as its new CEO [6][11]. A hire of that caliber signals a growth-acceleration phase, not a static portfolio.
4. PE-backed brand-and-management with physician-owned branches
The oldest model in concierge medicine, predating LifeSpanMD's "Entrepreneurial Equity" by more than 25 years. A parent management company owns the brand and provides centralized practice-management services. The parent may itself be backed by institutional capital. The local branch practice is owned by the practicing physicians, who pay the parent for brand licensing and management services. Each branch physician holds equity in their local practice.
The canonical example is MD², founded in 1996 by Dr. Howard Maron and Dr. Scott Hall in Seattle [13]. MD² International, LLC is the parent practice-management company. It owns the MD² brand and provides business, administrative, and financial consulting services to individual MD² practices. The parent does not practice medicine and is not licensed to provide health services [13]. Each MD² location is independently owned by two physicians, each of whom serves approximately 50 families (per MD²'s own corporate disclosures) [18]. MD² has used this hybrid structure to expand to more than 30 offices across the United States, with recent 2025 and 2026 openings in Manhattan, Conshohocken PA, Indian Wells CA, Chevy Chase MD, Cherry Creek North CO, and Gramercy Park NY [18]. The parent company has at points been publicly identified in industry-aggregator databases as backed by NexPhase Capital, though deal terms are not publicly disclosed and NexPhase's own portfolio page does not currently list MD² [14].
This hybrid is structurally different from the other three models. Patients see a national brand and consistent service standards across locations. Physicians retain ownership of their local practice rather than rolling it into a holding company. The institutional sponsor (when present) is invested in the brand-and-management layer, not the underlying clinical entity. The structure is in some ways the original blueprint for what LifeSpanMD now markets as "Entrepreneurial Equity," and the fact that MD² built it in 1996 is a reminder that the modern PE-backed concierge category did not start in 2014 with the MDVIP cycle. It started a generation earlier.
Private Medical is a separate point of comparison. Founded in 2002 by Dr. Jordan Shlain, who remains Founder and Chairman, Private Medical operates in NYC, Miami Beach, San Francisco, Menlo Park / Silicon Valley, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica [19]. The company describes itself as "self-funded and 100% financially independent" on its own corporate page, with member-aligned interests as a stated value [20]. Private Medical positions itself as a "Family Office for Health and Medicine" and has not appeared in PE-deal databases. It is the closest contemporary example of an ultra-premium concierge brand operating without an institutional sponsor.
The four models exist on a spectrum of physician ownership and institutional capital. Affiliation preserves the most physician ownership. Majority buyout transfers the most. Equity-partnership consolidators (LifeSpanMD) split the difference at the partner-practice level. The MD² hybrid splits the difference at the brand-vs-clinical level. Each maps to a different patient experience, a different physician compensation model, and a different long-term strategic outcome.
The 2025 Wave Was Not an Accident
Three deals in 12 months crystallized the shift:
September 30, 2025: Revelstoke Capital Partners completes its first disclosed concierge platform investment, a Tampa, Florida-area acquisition that becomes the 10th platform investment in Revelstoke Fund III [4]. Michael Constantinides, the Revelstoke principal who led the deal, publicly stated that concierge primary care has been "a high priority investment area for [Revelstoke] for several years" [4].
October 2025: Harrison Bane resigns from Surgery Partners and joins LifeSpanMD as CEO [6][11].
Late 2025 to early 2026: Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Charlesbank Capital Partners cross into Year 5 of their MDVIP hold. Trade-press coverage and industry observers anticipate a 2026 to 2027 banker-led process at the asset [7].
What ties all three together is the underlying economics. Concierge and DPC practices generate recurring, cash-pay revenue, the financial profile PE firms find most attractive after software companies. Annual membership fees are predictable. Cancellation rates are low. The physician panel size (under 300 patients in concierge and up to 800 in DPC) is a hard constraint that creates pricing power. And membership fees for the category now span $3,000 per year on the entry tier to over $40,000 per year for ultra-premium practices like the ones serving high-net-worth patients in NYC and Silicon Valley [12]. A typical Premium-tier practice like Brentwood MD in Nashville sits in the $5,000 to $12,000 per year range. PE firms underwriting this category are not betting on a fad. They are betting on a recurring-revenue annuity.
The Deal-Tracker: Who Owns What
A snapshot of every PE firm with a current direct concierge, DPC, or membership-primary-care portfolio company in the United States, current as of April 2026.
All AUM figures are approximate and verified against firm websites and most recent press releases.
PE firm | HQ | AUM | Concierge / DPC asset | Year acquired |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Goldman Sachs Asset Management (PE) + Charlesbank Capital Partners | NYC + Boston | $540B (Goldman alts) / $24B (Charlesbank) | MDVIP (co-control) | 2021 |
Blue Sea Capital | West Palm Beach, FL | $1.5B+ | SignatureMD (merged with Paragon and Cypress) | 2020 (merger close) |
Shore Capital Partners | Chicago | $14B+ | Specialdocs Consultants | Recap completed |
Revelstoke Capital Partners | Denver | $5.5B | Tampa-area concierge platform | September 30, 2025 |
Markel Group (Markel Ventures) | Richmond, VA | Insurance-float capital base | PartnerMD (6 offices, 4 states) | 2011 (15-year hold) |
Kain Capital | NYC | Not disclosed | Essen Health Care, Excelsior Integrated Medical, MY DR NOW, White Wilson Medical Center | Multiple, most recent 2026 |
NexPhase Capital (reported, unconfirmed) | NYC | $2.6B raised since inception | MD² International, LLC (parent management entity; physician-owned branches) | Reported in industry databases; not publicly confirmed [14] |
Behind this Tier 1 group sits a deeper bench of healthcare-services PE firms that have not yet bought a concierge platform but plausibly will. Leonard Green & Partners, the prior MDVIP owner, retains the institutional memory of the thesis. Summit Partners, the 2004 to 2017 MDVIP owner, manages $44 billion or more in growth-equity capital with deep healthcare exposure [21]. Linden Capital Partners in Chicago is one of the largest dedicated healthcare-exclusive PE managers in the US with no current concierge holding. WindRose Health Investors, Webster Equity Partners, and Nautic Partners all have nearby healthcare-services platforms that map cleanly to the rollup playbook. Any one of them could enter the category with a single deal.
Why the Repricing Window Matters: 2026 to 2027
When a banker process opens at MDVIP, three things change at once.
Comparable transactions reset. The next MDVIP valuation is the comparable price for every subsequent concierge platform sale. If the price clears at a premium to 2021, every founder-owned concierge platform in the US becomes more valuable. If it clears at a discount, the rollup pace slows.
Membership pricing pressure increases. PE-owned platforms operate under a fund clock. Goldman and Charlesbank need to deliver a return on their 2021 investment. The two clearest levers to grow the value of the asset before sale are (a) adding more affiliated physicians to expand the network, and (b) raising the average membership fee per physician. Expect the second lever to get pulled. Patients on existing memberships should not assume that the price they pay in 2026 is the price they will pay in 2028.
Independent practices gain optionality. Founder-owned networks that have avoided publicly disclosed PE so far become more attractive targets at higher comparable prices. Castle Connolly Private Health Partners (CCPHP) and Concierge Choice Physicians (CCPMD) are the two largest concierge networks still outside disclosed institutional PE ownership, and both are plausible first-PE-round candidates in a 2026 to 2027 recapitalization wave. A first PE round in either would be a category-shaping signal.
For patients researching a practice, the practical implication is straightforward. Ownership matters. A practice owned by a PE-backed network operates under different incentives than a physician-owned practice. Both can deliver excellent care. But the financial structure behind the door affects how often prices change, how often the practice expands or consolidates, and how the practice handles a founder's eventual retirement or sale. The State of Private Medicine 2026 annual report tracks these structural shifts in detail.
It is worth noting that I am making some speculations on fund timing here and this is subject to change. Additionally, I am only making these assessments based off of publicly available information and they are open to errors or omissions.
What This Means for Independent Physicians
If you own a concierge or DPC practice today, the PE landscape sets your strategic options.
You are either an acquisition target, in which case a buyout offer is increasingly likely as platforms like Specialdocs and Revelstoke's new Tampa concierge holding scout for tuck-ins. You are an equity-partnership candidate, in which case LifeSpanMD's pipeline (and likely two or three imitator platforms within 18 months) will reach out to discuss aggregating into their network without a full sale. Or you are a differentiated holdout, in which case your competitive edge becomes brand independence and the ability to make clinical and pricing decisions without a sponsor's input.
There is no wrong choice. There is only an informed choice and an uninformed one. The single most important step is to know which buyer category you fit, what each path implies for your patients and your equity, and what comparable transactions are settling at right now.
For background reading on the concierge market in PE-active metros, see the NextMD city pages for Naples FL metro, where LifeSpanMD is headquartered and concierge density is among the highest in the country, and Boston MA, where Charlesbank is based and where the next MDVIP transaction will likely be priced. The 2026 Nashville industry report walks through one of the fastest-growing concierge metros in the Southeast, where Premium-tier practices like Brentwood MD anchor the local market.
What This Means for Patients
Three things to know before joining a membership practice in 2026.
1. Check who owns the network behind the practice. A practice can be physician-owned, affiliated with a PE-owned national network like MDVIP or SignatureMD, owned by a majority-buyout PE platform, or part of an equity-partnership consolidator like LifeSpanMD. None of these are inherently good or bad. But the answer changes how the practice will operate over time.
2. Membership prices can move. PE-owned platforms have a return obligation to their investors. Adding more affiliated physicians and adjusting membership fees over time are standard levers PE-backed platforms pull as a hold matures. The top end of the concierge market reaches well over $40,000 per year per patient at premium practices, per a 2024 STAT News investigation that documented patients paying significantly more at the highest tier [22]. Patients on existing memberships should ask their practice directly about historical and projected fee changes before joining.
3. Independent MD/DO concierge and DPC practices remain a meaningful share of the market. Despite the consolidation wave, many concierge and DPC practices in the United States are still independently operated. The NextMD directory tracks 4,649 practices and growing, including a large share of independent physician-owned listings. If brand independence and stable pricing matter to you, those options exist.
NextMD helps you find and compare concierge medicine and direct primary care practices across the United States. Browse practices by city, compare pricing, and find a doctor who has time for you at nextmd.ai/search.
Sources
PR Newswire. (August 2021). Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Charlesbank Capital Partners to Acquire Majority Ownership of MDVIP from Leonard Green & Partners and Summit Partners. prnewswire.com
Charlesbank Capital Partners. (2021, updated 2025). MDVIP Investment Page. charlesbank.com/investments/mdvip
Revelstoke Capital Partners. (September 17, 2025). Revelstoke Capital Partners Completes 200th Transaction. revelstokecapital.com
PR Newswire / Revelstoke Capital Partners. (September 30, 2025). Revelstoke Capital Partners Makes Investment in Tampa-Area Concierge Medicine Platform. revelstokecapital.com
LifeSpanMD. (2026). Physician Network and Practice Value Maximization Report. lifespan.md/physician-network
Becker's ASC Review. (October 2025). Surgery Partners Executive to Resign. Coverage of Harrison Bane departure from Surgery Partners. beckersasc.com
Concierge Medicine Today. (September 17, 2025). Industry Trend Podcast: Why Are There So Many Concierge Medicine Practice Transactions? conciergemedicinetoday.org
Blue Sea Capital. (2020). SignatureMD and Paragon Merge to Establish Premier Provider of Membership-Based Concierge Medicine Support Services. blueseacapital.com
PitchBook. Shore Capital Recaps Specialdocs Consultants. pitchbook.com
BizProfile. LifeSpan MSO, LLC Florida Filing (Feb 7, 2023). Registered agent Greg DeYonker. bizprofile.net
Redefining Medicine Podcast (A4M). Harrison Bane on the "Entrepreneurial Equity" Model. directory.libsyn.com
NextMD Directory Data. (April 2026). Internal aggregation of 4,649 concierge and DPC practice records. Pricing tiers as published per practice on nextmd.ai/search.
MD². Concierge Medicine Origins. MD2 International, LLC corporate-structure description, founding details (Howard Maron MD and Scott Hall MD, Seattle, 1996), and parent practice-management disclosure that the parent does not practice medicine. md2.com/our-origins
PitchBook and industry-aggregator data. (2026). Reported NexPhase Capital investment in MD Squared International / MD². Deal terms not publicly disclosed; NexPhase's published portfolio page does not list MD² as of April 2026. Treat as reported, not primary-source confirmed. nexphase.com/portfolio
Summit Partners. MDVIP Companies Page. Documents Summit's 2004 minority investment, 2009 sale to Procter & Gamble, and 2014 majority recapitalization. summitpartners.com/companies/mdvip; supplemental: GlobeNewswire, Summit Partners to Acquire MDVIP (May 2014). globenewswire.com
Johns Hopkins Hub. (December 18, 2025). Fee-based primary care is rapidly rising in U.S., hastening doctor shortages for public. Johns Hopkins University coverage of concierge and DPC growth research. hub.jhu.edu
PR Newswire / Leonard Green & Partners. (November 2017). Leonard Green & Partners Acquires Majority Ownership of MDVIP from Summit Partners. prnewswire.com
MD². Concierge Medicine Practices: MD2 Locations Nationwide. Documents 30+ MD² offices, 2025-2026 location openings, and the disclosure that "each MD² location is independently owned by two physicians, each of whom sees just 50 families." md2.com/locations
Private Medical. Dr. Jordan Shlain, Founder and Chairman. Confirms 2002 founding by Dr. Jordan Shlain. Direct quote: "In 2002, Dr. Jordan Shlain founded Private Medical with a simple but radical belief: the foundation of medicine is trust." privatemedical.org/jordan-shlain
Private Medical. Our Story. Documents 20-year operating history, six-city footprint (NYC, Miami Beach, San Francisco, Menlo Park / Silicon Valley, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica), and direct corporate self-disclosure: "self-funded and 100% financially independent." privatemedical.org/our-story
Summit Partners. Firm Page (AUM Disclosure). Documents Summit's $44 billion or more in cumulative growth-investing capital under management as of 2025. summitpartners.com
Mendoza, M. and Joseph, A. (2024, November 15). Some patients are paying up to $50,000 per year in fees for "concierge medicine." Here's what's behind its rise. STAT News. statnews.com