Do hospital mergers reduce costs?

Abstract:

:Proponents of hospital consolidation claim that mergers lead to significant cost savings, but there is little systematic evidence backing these claims. For a large sample of hospital mergers between 2000 and 2010, I estimate difference-in-differences models that compare cost trends at acquired hospitals to cost trends at hospitals whose ownership did not change. I find evidence of economically and statistically significant cost reductions at acquired hospitals. On average, acquired hospitals realize cost savings between 4 and 7 percent in the years following the acquisition. These results are robust to a variety of different control strategies, and do not appear to be easily explained by post-merger changes in service and/or patient mix. I then explore several extensions of the results to examine (a) whether the acquiring hospital/system realizes cost savings post-merger and (b) if cost savings depend on the size of the acquirer and/or the geographic overlap of the merging hospitals.

journal_name

J Health Econ

authors

Schmitt M

doi

10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.01.007

subject

Has Abstract

pub_date

2017-03-01 00:00:00

pages

74-94

eissn

0167-6296

issn

1879-1646

pii

S0167-6296(17)30093-0

journal_volume

52

pub_type

杂志文章
  • Price adjustment in the hospital sector.

    abstract::We analyse the properties of optimal price adjustment to hospitals when no lump-sum transfers are allowed and when prices differ to reflect observable exogenous differences in costs. We find that: (a) when the marginal benefit from treatment is decreasing and the cost function is the power function, price adjustment f...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2010.09.001

    authors: Miraldo M,Siciliani L,Street A

    更新日期:2011-01-01 00:00:00

  • Aversion to health inequalities in healthcare prioritisation: a multicriteria optimisation perspective.

    abstract::In this paper we discuss the prioritisation of healthcare projects where there is a concern about health inequalities, but the decision maker is reluctant to make explicit quantitative value judgements and the data systems only allow the measurement of health at an aggregate level. Our analysis begins with a standard ...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2014.04.005

    authors: Morton A

    更新日期:2014-07-01 00:00:00

  • Worker sorting, compensating differentials and health insurance: evidence from displaced workers.

    abstract::This article introduces an empirical strategy to the compensating differentials literature that (i) allows both individual observed and unobserved characteristics to be rewarded differently in firms based on health insurance provision, and (ii) selection to jobs that provide benefits to operate on both sides of the la...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2007.02.001

    authors: Lehrer SF,Pereira NS

    更新日期:2007-09-01 00:00:00

  • Advance directives and medical treatment at the end of life.

    abstract::To assess the consequences of advance medical directives--which explicitly specify a patient's preferences for one or more specific types of medical treatment in the event of a loss of competence--we analyze the medical care of elderly Medicare beneficiaries who died between 1985 and 1995. We compare the care of patie...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2003.08.006

    authors: Kessler DP,McClellan MB

    更新日期:2004-01-01 00:00:00

  • Modelling and estimation of valuations for the Dutch London Handicap Scale.

    abstract::This paper presents a study to estimate a preference-based participation index from the Dutch London Handicap Scale (LHS) classification system that can be applied to past or future Dutch LHS data sets. A subset of 60 states were valued by a representative sample of 285 respondents of the Dutch general adult populatio...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2006.01.004

    authors: Groothuis-Oudshoorn CG,Chorus AM,Taeke van Beekum W,Detmar SB,van den Hout WB

    更新日期:2006-11-01 00:00:00

  • The social value of mortality risk reduction: VSL versus the social welfare function approach.

    abstract::We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality risk reduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost-benefit analysis--i.e., the "value per statistical life" (VSL) approach-and various social welfare functions (SWFs). The SWFs are either utilitarian or...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2014.02.001

    authors: Adler MD,Hammitt JK,Treich N

    更新日期:2014-05-01 00:00:00

  • How payment systems affect physicians' provision behaviour--an experimental investigation.

    abstract::Understanding how physicians respond to incentives from payment schemes is a central concern in health economics research. We introduce a controlled laboratory experiment to analyse the influence of incentives from fee-for-service and capitation payments on physicians' supply of medical services. In our experiment, ph...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.05.001

    authors: Hennig-Schmidt H,Selten R,Wiesen D

    更新日期:2011-07-01 00:00:00

  • The effect of comorbidities on treatment decisions.

    abstract::Medical decision analyses typically focus on one disease, that is, on one source of risk. In many medical decisions multiple sources of risk co-exist, however. This paper analyzes the effect of such comorbidities on treatment decisions. The effect of comorbidities on treatment decisions depends primarily on the way in...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/S0167-6296(03)00045-6

    authors: Bleichrodt H,Crainich D,Eeckhoudt L

    更新日期:2003-09-01 00:00:00

  • Overworked? On the relationship between workload and health worker performance.

    abstract::The shortage of health workers in many low-income countries poses a threat to the quality of health services. When the number of patients per health worker grows sufficiently high, there will be insufficient time to diagnose and treat all patients adequately. This paper tests the hypothesis that high caseload reduces ...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2010.05.006

    authors: Maestad O,Torsvik G,Aakvik A

    更新日期:2010-09-01 00:00:00

  • Time to death and the forecasting of macro-level health care expenditures: some further considerations.

    abstract::Although the effect of time to death (TTD) on health care expenditures (HCE) has been investigated using individual level data, the most profound implications of TTD have been for the forecasting of macro-level HCE. Here we estimate the TTD model using macro-level data from the Netherlands consisting of mortality rate...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.08.003

    authors: van Baal PH,Wong A

    更新日期:2012-12-01 00:00:00

  • Mental health: market power and governance.

    abstract::This paper is concerned with the pricing behaviour of providers of residential care for people with mental health problems. Two aspects of pricing were considered. First, are there differences between providers' market power and their actual mark-up rates (e.g. due to differences in motivation)? Second, do the differe...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/s0167-6296(00)00040-0

    authors: Forder J

    更新日期:2000-11-01 00:00:00

  • Determinants of managed care penetration.

    abstract::This paper examines factors associated with differences in managed care penetration across geographic areas. Two alternative measures of managed care penetration are considered: the percentage of revenue physicians received from managed care contracts and market survey data on enrollments in managed care plans. Result...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/s0167-6296(97)00045-3

    authors: Dranove D,Simon CJ,White WD

    更新日期:1998-12-01 00:00:00

  • Valuing health states: a comparison of methods.

    abstract::In eliciting health state valuations, two widely used methods are the standard gamble (SG) and the time trade off (TTO). Both methods make assumptions about individual preferences that are too restrictive to allow them to act as perfect proxies for utility. Therefore, a choice between them might instead be made on emp...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/0167-6296(95)00038-0

    authors: Dolan P,Gudex C,Kind P,Williams A

    更新日期:1996-04-01 00:00:00

  • Is there empirical evidence for "Defensive Medicine"? A reassessment.

    abstract::Proponents of tort reform applied to medical malpractice argue for change partly on the premise that the threat of lawsuits has made medical care more costly. Using U.S. longitudinal data from the National Long-Term Care Survey merged with Medicare claims and other data for 1985-2000, this study assesses whether tort ...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.12.006

    authors: Sloan FA,Shadle JH

    更新日期:2009-03-01 00:00:00

  • The effect of relationship status on health with dynamic health and persistent relationships.

    abstract::The dynamic evolution of health and persistent relationship status pose econometric challenges to disentangling the causal effect of relationships on health from the selection effect of health on relationship choice. Using a new econometric strategy we find that marriage is not universally better for health. Rather, c...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2014.03.010

    authors: Kohn JL,Averett SL

    更新日期:2014-07-01 00:00:00

  • The diffusion of innovations in hospitals. Some econometric considerations.

    abstract::Empirical studies of the diffusion of innovations have not addressed adequately econometric problems that are characteristic of such analyses. Reanalysis of data for five innovations using an estimator with desirable statistical properties results in a considerably revised estimate of the impact of prospective reimbur...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/0167-6296(85)90014-1

    authors: Lee RH,Waldman DM

    更新日期:1985-12-01 00:00:00

  • Health insurance and imperfect competition in the health care market.

    abstract::We show that when health care providers have market power and engage in Cournot competition, a competitive upstream health insurance market results in over-insurance and over-priced health care. Even though consumers and firms anticipate the price interactions between these two markets - the price set in one market af...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2006.03.003

    authors: Vaithianathan R

    更新日期:2006-11-01 00:00:00

  • On the use of survival analysis techniques to estimate medical care costs.

    abstract::Measurement of treatment costs is important in the evaluation of medical interventions. Accurate cost estimation is problematic, when cost records are incomplete. Methods from the survival analysis literature have been proposed for estimating costs using available data. In this article, we clarify assumptions necessar...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/s0167-6296(98)00056-3

    authors: Etzioni RD,Feuer EJ,Sullivan SD,Lin D,Hu C,Ramsey SD

    更新日期:1999-06-01 00:00:00

  • Unintended consequences of supply-side cost control? Evidence from China's new cooperative medical scheme.

    abstract::We examine the effects of a "per-episode fee limit" that was recently implemented as a cost-control policy in China's health care system. Using hospital administrative data on a rural public health insurance program in China, we find that hospital departments dynamically adjust episode fees in response to the level of...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2018.06.008

    authors: Chan MK,Zeng G

    更新日期:2018-09-01 00:00:00

  • Decomposition of moral hazard.

    abstract::This study seeks to simulate the portion of moral hazard that is due to the income transfer contained in the coinsurance price reduction. Healthcare spending of uninsured individuals from the MEPS with a priority health condition is compared with the predicted counterfactual spending of those same individuals if they ...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.12.003

    authors: Nyman JA,Koc C,Dowd BE,McCreedy E,Trenz HM

    更新日期:2018-01-01 00:00:00

  • Are novel drugs more risky for patients than less novel drugs?

    abstract::The Food and Drug Administration has accelerated the approval of therapeutically novel drugs so that patients have faster access to innovative drug therapies. Little research, however, has examined the variation in risks among therapeutically novel and less novel drugs. Do drugs that represent greater novelty also ent...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2004.03.007

    authors: Olson MK

    更新日期:2004-11-01 00:00:00

  • Understanding heterogeneity in the effects of birth weight on adult cognition and wages.

    abstract::A large economics literature has shown long term impacts of birth weight on adult outcomes, including IQ and earnings that are often robust to sibling or twin fixed effects. We examine potential mechanisms underlying these effects by incorporating findings from the genetics and neuroscience literatures. We use a sampl...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.01.005

    authors: Justin Cook C,Fletcher JM

    更新日期:2015-05-01 00:00:00

  • Alcohol dependence and the price of alcoholic beverages.

    abstract::This study estimates the impact of the price of alcoholic beverages on latent dimensions of current alcohol dependence and abuse. A three-part econometric model is used to estimate the impact of price on three latent dimensions (factors). For heavier drinking, the estimated price elasticity is -1.325 (P = 0.027); for ...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/s0167-6296(02)00099-1

    authors: Farrell S,Manning WG,Finch MD

    更新日期:2003-01-01 00:00:00

  • The lifetime costs and benefits of medical technology.

    abstract::Measuring the lifetime costs and benefits of medical technologies is essential in evaluating technological change and determining the productivity of medical care. Using data on Medicare beneficiaries with a heart attack in the late 1980s and 17 years of follow up data, I evaluate the long-term costs and benefits of r...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2007.09.003

    authors: Cutler DM

    更新日期:2007-12-01 00:00:00

  • Teaching and hospital costs: the case of radiology.

    abstract::Investigates production and cost effects of teaching in radiology departments. If students are substitutes for physicians, production costs may be less in teaching than in non-teaching hospitals for a given level of output. Empirical results for Veterans Administration hospitals suggest that teaching reduces costs for...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/0167-6296(83)90010-3

    authors: Hosek JR,Palmer AR

    更新日期:1983-03-01 00:00:00

  • Explaining China's regional health expenditures using LM-type unit root tests.

    abstract::This paper investigates the relationship between health care expenditure, income, and other factors that are not related to income for China with pooled cross-section and time series data. To study the stationarity property of these variables, we use panel Lagrange Multiplier (LM) unit root tests that allow for struct...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2006.12.002

    authors: Chou WL

    更新日期:2007-07-01 00:00:00

  • The choice of medical providers in rural Bénin: a comparison of discrete choice models.

    abstract::In this paper we estimate three different discrete choice models of provider choice using data from the rural District of Ouidah in Bénin. These three model are: Multinomial Logit (ML); (2) Independent Multinomial Probit (IMP); (3) Multinomial Probit (MP). A comparison of IMP and MP allows us to reject the independenc...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/s0167-6296(96)00492-4

    authors: Bolduc D,Lacroix G,Muller C

    更新日期:1996-08-01 00:00:00

  • Medicare prospective payment and the volume and intensity of skilled nursing facility services.

    abstract::In 1998, Medicare adopted a per diem Prospective Payment System (PPS) for skilled nursing facility care, which was intended to deter the use of high-cost rehabilitative services. The average per diem decreased under the PPS, but because per diems increased for greater therapy minutes, the ability of the PPS to deter t...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.05.014

    authors: Grabowski DC,Afendulis CC,McGuire TG

    更新日期:2011-07-01 00:00:00

  • Heightened mortality after the death of a spouse: marriage protection or marriage selection?

    abstract::We test whether the heightened mortality after the death of a spouse represents correlation or causation by examining the heterogeneity in the bereavement effect based on the spouse's cause of death. Some causes of death are correlated with socioeconomic characteristics while others are not. Equality in the bereavemen...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.04.001

    authors: Espinosa J,Evans WN

    更新日期:2008-09-01 00:00:00

  • A further analysis of the physician inducement controversy.

    abstract::This article extends several recent contributions that have compared the physician-induced demand hypothesis to the theory of a monopoly where advertising is included as a decision variable. By introducing a standard profit-maximizing model with inducement, it derives the conditions for the optimum level of inducement...

    journal_title:Journal of health economics

    pub_type: 杂志文章

    doi:10.1016/0167-6296(87)90010-5

    authors: Stano M

    更新日期:1987-09-01 00:00:00