Recent Research in the Media
- STAT article considers what happens with cross-market hospital mergers
In a recent STAT article, published in April 2024, the implications of cross-market hospital mergers are discussed. Referencing the UC Berkeley Health Economists, Daniel Arnold, the article mentions that this is the third study that stands as a demonstration to cross-market hospital mergers causing price increases.
View the STAT article and the PDF.
- Modern Healthcare article leads the discussion on cross-market hospital merger oversight
Modern Healthcare article discusses new research which shows that acquired out-of-market hospitals tend to increase prices. The study found both larger and smaller systems involved in cross-market mergers were associated with higher prices. The Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department have updated their guidelines to potentially be used to analyze cross-market hospital mergers.
View the article on Modern Healthcare and the PDF.
- Professor Richard Scheffler elected Lifetime Fellow of AAAS
In a newsletter sent to the Berkeley Public Health Faculty, Richard Scheffler’s election as a lifetime fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) was announced.
View the article here.
- Six UC Berkeley scientists elected lifetime fellows of American Association for the Advancement of Science
Richard Scheffler, along with five other UC Berkeley researchers have been elected 2023 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.
View the article here and learn more about Richard Scheffler’s Wikipedia page here.
- The Better Healthcare Policy Group
The Better Healthcare Policy Group held a meeting of employers/purchasers, health plans, provider organizations and health policy leaders in Washington D.C. on March 14th, 2024 to discuss and advance the criteria for continuously improving better care as laid out in the Health Affairs Scholar article “The Better Care Plan: A Blueprint for Improving America’s Healthcare System”.
View the Health Affairs Scholar Article at this link.
Recent Publications
- New evidence on the impacts of cross-market hospital mergers on commercial prices and measures of quality
By Daniel R. Arnold, Jaime S. King, Brent D. Fulton, Alexandra D. Montague, Katherine L. Gudiksen, Thomas L. Greaney, Richard M. Scheffler| Published in Health Services Research in April 2024 | Link to full report.
“As hospital systems have expanded, they’ve extended into regions where they previously had no presence. A recent study found 55% of the 1500 hospitals targeted for a merger or acquisition from 2009 to 2019 operated in a commuting zone that the acquirer did not previously operate in. The price and quality effects of these “cross-market” hospital mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are the focus of this paper.”
What this study adds:
- Serial acquirers are significant contributors to estimated cross-market price effects.
- We find no discernible impact of cross-market mergers on mortality and readmission rates for heart failure, heart attacks and pneumonia.
- Overall, this study provides further evidence that cross-market hospital mergers lead to price increases and novel findings of no quality effect and the impact of serial acquirers on the price effect. More antitrust scrutiny of these mergers—particularly those of serial acquirers—appears prudent given the current state of highly concentrated hospital markets in the United States.
Questions should be addressed to Daniel Arnold, danielarnold@berkeley.edu
- Private Equity–Acquired Physician Practices And Market Penetration Increased Substantially, 2012–21
By Ola Abdelhadi, Brent D. Fulton, Laura Alexander, Richard M. Scheffler | Published March 2024 in Health Affairs | Link to full report.
“Private equity (PE) firms have been acquiring physician practices at an increasing rate, raising concerns about such firms’ penetration at the physician level into local markets and the impact on health care quality and prices. However, limited knowledge exists about the extent of PE firms’ control in local markets. By linking data on PE acquisitions to physician data and using full-time-equivalent physicians as the base of assessment, we estimated the local market share of each PE firm within ten physician specialties at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level.”
Petris Director Joins the Better Healthcare Policy Group
