Senate adopts amendment limiting publication of healthcare business ownership data

The Indiana Senate on March 24, 2025 adopted an amendment to House Bill 16‑66 that makes certain business ownership information collected under the bill confidential.

Senator Johnson, sponsor of the amendment, told colleagues the change is designed to protect individual practitioners and small physician groups from being publicly listed in a way that could expose them to hostile corporate acquisition attempts. "We don't want to expose those businesses directly to that information in the public eye unless it's already covered under Secretary of State information," Johnson said.

The amendment creates a confidentiality clause limited to the new information collected specifically through the bill's reporting process. Johnson said the amendment does not change existing public filings at the Secretary of State, professional licensing agencies (PLA), or the Department of Health; it applies only to the aggregated data produced under this legislation. "We're protecting some of that in this amendment, by creating a confidentiality clause in that section on the business entity itself pertaining to this information we're collecting for this bill only," Johnson said.

Other senators debated the tradeoffs. Senator Gudor raised concerns about precedent for giving confidentiality to one industry when other business types are public, noting senators file economic interest forms and public disclosure supports accountability. Senator Young asked whether the confidentiality would extend to addresses and individual names; Johnson said it pertains to the business entity information collected under the bill and not to unrelated disclosures such as required economic interest filings.

Senator Cadore described the underlying policy problem the bill seeks to address: tracking private equity acquisitions and other ownership changes so the state better understands market trends while attempting not to expose individual owners to solicitation. "Bigger picture, there's a lot of other physician group or, you know, a singular practice and those kind of things. I don't want to give a list out there for somebody to go through and have that specific information available for somebody to go after," Johnson said.

After debate, the chamber voted by voice to adopt the motion to amend. The chair announced, "Motion to amend passes." The bill, as amended, was ordered to engrossment.

The amendment's text, as discussed on the floor, (1) limits confidentiality to information newly collected under the bill; (2) applies to business entities with ownership interests (not to licensing data already made public by other agencies); and (3) was described by the sponsor as intended to protect individuals who are owners of healthcare business entities from being exposed in a single aggregated public list.

The floor discussion made three practical clarifications that senators emphasized: (a) the confidentiality applies to the new aggregated reporting required by the bill, not to preexisting Secretary of State or licensing records; (b) it applies to health care entities that are business owners (hospitals, physician groups, dental or therapy practices) rather than to all individual clinicians unless they appear in an ownership role; and (c) the amendment was intended to respond to concerns raised in committee about market solicitation of owners and unintended consequences of a public, aggregated ownership list.

The Senate adopted the amendment by voice vote; a numeric roll call was not recorded in the transcript for the amendment. The bill, with the amendment, was ordered to engrossment for further processing.

Implementation details and any rules for withholding or releasing the confidential data were not finalized on the floor; those operational questions would be resolved in subsequent drafting and rulemaking by the agencies named in the bill.

Ending: The Senate moved the bill forward with the confidentiality amendment; sponsors and opponents flagged policy tradeoffs between transparency and owner safety that may be revisited in later committee or implementation steps.