SEARCH BEFORE YOU BOOK, HIRE OR BUY
Search a business by name, or choose a profession, ZIP code, and radius. See verified PE-linked businesses beside verified independent local choices.
LIVE VERIFIED DATA
Checked through August 29, 2026
Not yet verified does not mean independent. A missing business means we have not published a supported ownership finding for it yet.
START WITH WHAT YOU NEED
FROM INFORMATION TO LOCAL POWER
A directory can expose a hidden ownership chain. Moving past the roll-up economy also requires better community choices and practical infrastructure for owners who want another path.
Follow sourced relationships from the familiar sign to the operator, parent and investor.
Search the record →02CHOOSE WITH CONTEXTMeasure what changed locally.Compare price, quality, access and ownership. Support a local option when the real alternatives are comparable.
Open the community plan →03PRESERVE INDEPENDENCEBuy capability without automatically selling control.Use the 90-day plan, sector scorecards, succession paths and private owner-help intake.
Open the owner playbook →HOW COVERAGE GROWS
Coverage is built systematically, then every ownership claim goes through a separate evidence review before publication.
ANONYMOUS BY DESIGN. AUDITABLE BY ANYONE.
This is an advocacy project. We believe people should know who controls the businesses they rely on. The operators stay out of the spotlight to reduce personal exposure and keep attention on checkable public records.
No one can pay to be added, ranked, suppressed or removed.
What enters the queue: official directory sweeps, monitored source changes, public submissions and attributed leads, including patterns highlighted in Tiffany Cianci’s public advocacy. Leads are never proof and never publish automatically.
WHY THIS SHOULD MATTER TO YOU
An acquisition can bring capital, technology, professional management and a real exit for a tired or retiring owner. It can also add acquisition debt, investor return targets, fees and an expected resale. Those obligations may be met through genuine productivity and growth, higher prices, lower costs, more acquisitions or a mix. The outcome is not predetermined.
For a town, the practical issue is control: who decides about jobs, suppliers, property, branches, hours and lower-margin services, and who lives with those decisions. Remote ownership, headquarters relocation, management centralization and closure are different events. Track each one rather than assuming one proves the others.
Ownership is a clue, not a verdict. Start with the sourced relationship, then measure what actually changed. Use the community field guide →
TRANSLATION GUIDE
Small businesses often do need better scheduling, billing, purchasing, inventory, route density, technology and management depth. A buyer may improve those things. An independent owner can implement many of the same systems without automatically selling control.
The warning sign is not a dashboard. It is a dashboard with only one kind of success. Revenue, visits or jobs per day need countermeasures for quality, safety, access, callbacks, turnover and professional judgment. Otherwise, understaffing and rushed work can be misread as productivity.
In one study of acquired physician practices, visit volume and charges rose after acquisition. That does not prove every additional visit was unnecessary, but the authors identified overuse of profitable services as one possible explanation (JAMA Health Forum, 2022). The right question is specific: what changed, compared with what, and did service outcomes improve too?
Independent businesses should not reject efficiency. They should define it more completely. See the sector scorecards and 90-day plan →
WHAT THE RESEARCH ACTUALLY SHOWS
A landmark study of 18,000+ nursing homes found that private equity ownership increased short-term mortality of Medicare patients by about 10%, an estimated 20,000+ lives over the study period, while taxpayer spending per patient episode rose about 11%. Nurse availability fell and patient mobility declined.
Source: Gupta, Howell, Yannelis & Gupta (NBER/SSRN) · NBER Digest · Chicago Booth Review
A 2023 study in JAMA found hospital-acquired adverse events rose about 25% after private equity acquisition, including a 27% rise in falls and a 38% rise in central-line bloodstream infections, relative to matched control hospitals.
Source: JAMA (2023) · NIH Research Matters · Harvard Health Care Policy
A JAMA Health Forum study of 578 PE-acquired dermatology, gastroenterology, and ophthalmology practices found charges per claim rose 20% and allowed amounts 11% after acquisition, with visit volume up 16%. The authors note this “may reflect overutilization of profitable services and/or unnecessary or low-value care.”
Source: Singh et al., JAMA Health Forum (2022) · Healthcare Dive
Related: Health Affairs (2025), GI professional fees · Health Affairs (2025), PE/hospital-affiliated specialists negotiate higher prices
The share of U.S. dentists affiliated with private equity nearly doubled from 6.6% in 2015 to 12.8% in 2021, and more than doubled among specialists like endodontists and oral surgeons. PE dental transactions went from under 20 a year to 96 a year over that period.
Source: Health Affairs (2024) · ADA News
Investment firms have quietly rolled up thousands of veterinary clinics. One firm, JAB Holdings, drew a letter from Senators Warren and Blumenthal over consolidating vet care and raising costs for pet owners while keeping the clinics’ original local names on the door.
Source: Warren/Blumenthal letter to JAB (2024) · PBS NewsHour · Fortune
Private equity-owned companies were tied to roughly 21–23% of large U.S. healthcare bankruptcies in 2023 and 2024, including three of the four largest, each with over $1 billion in liabilities. The collapse of PE-backed Steward Health Care put more than 30 hospitals in eight states at risk.
Source: PESP bankruptcy reports · PESP on Steward · Health Exec
The same playbook has moved into plumbing, HVAC, and electrical. Firms buy dozens of local companies, keep the trusted local names, and combine them into regional brands built to be resold.
Source: Marketplace · Forbes
THE OTHER SIDE
Private equity can give an owner liquidity, add capital, professionalize operations and help a company expand. Large-sample research also finds that employment and operating outcomes vary by the type of business acquired rather than moving in one universal direction. A sale may be the most workable answer for a particular owner. The honest comparison is between the complete deal and realistic alternatives, including whether the needed capital and back-office capabilities can be purchased separately. See the large-sample employment and productivity study →
WHAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO
HOW WE KNOW
1×
A filing, official ownership disclosure, current investor page, transaction announcement or other direct public record.
2×
Independent reporting that agrees on the owner and transaction. Aggregators and user submissions alone are not enough.
The ownership claim stays unpublished. “Not established” gets the same visual weight as every other result.
HELP IMPROVE THE RECORD
Suggest a company, send a source or correct a record. Every submission enters a review queue and is checked before anything can publish.