Objective To provide some theoretical reference and practical guidance for the medical risk management and early warning of private medical institutions, and to improve the service level and social reputation of private medical institutions. Methods China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, VIP, and Web of Science database were searched for literature on medical risk management of private medical institutions published from the dates of establishment of databases to July 31, 2023. CiteSpace software was used for analysis. The aspects of literature number, literature source, author-institution cooperation, keyword co-occurrence, keyword clustering and burst were analyzed. Results A total of 2 635 literature were detected. Among them, there were 1446 articles in Chinese and 1189 articles in English. Although domestic research started late, it covered a wide range of disciplines and research fields. The Chinese literature showed a growth trend in the medium term, but the growth trend was slower than that of foreign literature. At the same time, the cooperation network of foreign authors and institutions was closer than that of domestic ones, and the overall development was relatively insufficient. There were differences between domestic and foreign research hotspots in terms of disciplines and research contents. Conclusions It is necessary to strengthen the theoretical and practical research on medical risk management of private medical institutions, and accelerate the construction of risk management and early warning models suitable for the characteristics of private medical institutions in China. In the future, the emerging research fields such as moral hazard, emergency and internal control need to be deepened and expanded.