Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-14-2024
Publication Title
Health Services Insights
Volume
17
First page number:
1
Last page number:
11
Abstract
Background: Physician-hospital vertical integration is gaining steam but it is unclear how they affect hospital output.
Objective: To examine the direct impact of vertical integration on hospital output.
Design: A pooled design with 6-year data using linear regressions was used. Then, panel data design with hospital fixed effects was used.
Methods: We linked American Hospital Association data (2016-2021) with AHRQ Comparative Health System Performance Initiative’s Compendium (2018, 2020, 2021; 34 987 hospital-year observations) to develop new measures of vertical integration and assess its relationship with several measures of hospital output including annualized total admissions, total number of inpatients days, and total number of emergency department (ED) and outpatient visits.
Results: We find that a hospital’s entry into a vertical integration has little or no impact on a broad set of metrics capturing hospital output.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that vertical integrations as currently structured may not yield meaningful gains in output or productivity and hospitals faced with declining productivity need to carefully consider the expected gains from vertical integration strategies.
Keywords
Vertical integration; Hospital output; Patient discharges; Length of stay
Disciplines
Occupational Health and Industrial Hygiene | Quality Improvement
File Format
File Size
293 KB
Language
English
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Repository Citation
Upadhyay, S.,
Bhandari, N.
(2024).
Does Physician-Hospital Vertical Integration Affect Hospital Output?.
Health Services Insights, 17
1-11.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/11786329241304619
