Jamie Godwin, Daniel Arnold, Brent Fulton, and Richard Scheffler collaborated and studied the relationship between hospital ownership of physician organizations and prices in “The Association between Hospital-Physician Vertical Integration and Outpatient Physician Prices Paid by Commercial Insurers: New Evidence“. The widespread acquisition of physician practices by hospitals and health systems—a practice known as vertical integration—has been the most significant shift in healthcare provider market structure over the past decade. Market-level hospital-physician vertical integration was positively associated with physician prices for select specialties but was not associated with changes in the use of facility-fee billing. The authors call for more research to be done on quality effects of hospital-physician vertical integration.
