Healthcare markets

Reducing Spending And Enhancing Value In US Health Care: Reflections On The GAO Report

Posted on By crystal-haryanto

Federal health spending plays a central role in the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook. Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and private health insurance spending are projected to increase in the coming years. These unsustainable trends—occurring without commensurate improvements in population health— create a burning need for reform: Without meaningful change, rising health care costs will increasingly strain household budgets, crowd out other federal and state priorities, and undermine the nation’s long-term fiscal stability.

Against this urgent backdrop, the United States Government Accountability Office issued its 2024 report, “Highlights of a Forum: Reducing Spending and Enhancing Value in the U.S. Health Care System”. The report summarizes the discussions of an expert forum convened in October 2024. Dr. Papanicolas and Dr. Scheffler, the director of the Petris Center, highlight below the areas the group believes are most critical for policymakers to consider and offer new insights that have gained salience given shifts in the policy landscape since the forum was conducted.

Please view the report linked here.

New Evidence about the Heterogeneity of Indiana’s Healthcare Markets: Competition, Costs, and the Impacts of Market Structure

Posted on By crystal-haryanto

By Brent D. Fulton, Daniel R. Arnold, Ola A. Abdelhadi, and Richard M. Scheffler | Published October 2022 | Link to Full Report

On April 29, 2021, Indiana enacted HB 1405, directing a study to be conducted on the market concentration in Indiana’s healthcare sector. This study focuses on the health insurance, hospital, and physician industries. The healthcare sector in Indiana is a microcosm of the healthcare sector in the United States, consisting of dominant health insurers and a delivery system that has evolved into a patchwork of hospital systems that have grown in size and geographic scope via mergers and acquisitions, including vertical acquisitions of physician organizations. This study shows that the healthcare sector in Indiana is not monolithic, neither across the industries we analyzed—health insurance, hospitals, and physicians—nor across its MSAs. Therefore, policies aimed at improving healthcare competition, affordability, and quality need to account for this heterogeneity.

This study was funded by the Indiana Legislative Services Agency (Grant no. 22021).

The report will be presented at the Interim Study Committee on Financial Institutions and Insurance hearing on October 20, 2022.

Physician Compensation In Physician-Owned and Hospital-Owned Practices

Posted on By crystal-haryanto

By Christopher M. Waley, Daniel R. Arnold, Nate Gross, and Anupam B. Jena | Published December 8, 2021 in Health Affairs | Link to Full Article

Physician practices are increasingly being acquired by hospitals and health systems. Despite evidence that this type of vertical integration is profitable for hospitals, the association between these acquisitions and the incomes of physicians in the acquired practices is unknown. We combined national survey data on physician practice ownership with data on physician income to examine whether hospital or health system ownership of physician practices was associated with differences in physician income during 2014–18. During the study period, hospital and health system ownership of physician practices increased by 89.2 percent, from 24.1 percent to 45.6 percent of all physicians in our sample. Among physician practices overall, vertical integration with hospitals or health systems was associated with, on average, 0.8 percent lower income compared with independent physicians after multivariable adjustment. In analyses by physician specialty, vertical integration of physician practices with hospitals or health systems was associated with lower income for nonsurgical specialists, no difference in income for primary care physicians, and slightly higher income for surgical specialists. Although vertical integration of physician practices is a rapidly growing trend, physicians might not directly benefit financially.

Richard Scheffler Speaks in PEPC Competition Webinar

Posted on By crystal-haryanto

Richard Scheffler acted as a panelist at a webinar hosted by the Partnership to Empower Physician-Led Care, an advocacy group promoting value-based care as a path to sustainability for independent physicians and practices. The webinar discussed provider consolidation’s impact on health outcomes and how best to ensure provider competitive behavior instead. Specifically, Dr. Scheffler touched on issues related to increasing private equity investments and vertical integration in healthcare, effects on prices, and next steps at the legislative level.

The title is “Addressing Consolidation in Health Care Markets: The Impact of Provider Consolidation on Cost and Quality.” Take a look here — 10:10 to 27:20.

Consolidation of Hospitals During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Government Bailouts and Private Equity

Posted on By alyssa-birchfield

By Richard M. Scheffler and Laura M. Alexander | Published July 20, 2021 in The Milbank Quarterly | Link to Full Article

On May 19, 2021, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), chair of the US Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, held a hearing on hospital consolidation and the subsequent increase in hospital prices observed across the U.S. Most hospital markets meet the FTC/DOJ guidelines definition of being highly concentrated and, as a result, are not likely to exhibit competitive levels of prices, quality, or innovation. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic is shaping the financial outlooks of large and small hospital systems in a manner that is expected to further fuel this consolidation trend. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, private equity funds are sitting on enormous stores of “dry powder,” money they have amassed from investors and are required to spend or return within the next several years. Widespread expectations are that much of that dry powder will be deployed in health care, ultimately leading to vertical integration.

The article explores the harmful effects of post-COVID-19 consolidation through private equity in the healthcare space, emphasizing the damaging effects on local health care markets.

Modern Healthcare Features Richard Scheffler in Article on Blue Cross NC Independent Physician Initiative

Posted on By alyssa-birchfield

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has partnered with investment firm Deerfield Management Company in a joint venture aimed at helping independent physicians grow and strengthen their practices. The company will offer management infrastructure, technology support and marketplace information. Modern Healthcare sought comments from Dr. Richard Scheffler on the effects of this joint venture on independent physician practices, with Scheffler noting that this could help these physicians “ease the difficulty of managing their own small practice in today’s healthcare environment.”

Read the full article and all of Dr. Scheffler’s insights here.

Modern Healthcare Interviews Richard Scheffler Regarding Growing Private Equity Investment in Healthcare

Posted on By alyssa-birchfield

Modern Healthcare interviewed Richard Scheffler for an article discussing the growing trend of private equity investment in the healthcare sector. They also cite his recent report on the topic. The interview took place after the noteworthy buyout of medical supply company Medline by a trio of private equity firms—Blackstone Group, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman. As Dr. Scheffler puts it, this may be “the start of an explosion of private equity deals in healthcare.”

Read the full article here.

U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights Cites Petris Center’s Richard Scheffler, Private Equity Report

Posted on By alyssa-birchfield

The Petris Center and American Antitrust Institute (AAI)’s joint report on rising private equity investment in the healthcare industry was cited during the May 19 hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights as part of the discussion about hospital consolidation and competition. The Petris Center’s Richard Scheffler and AAI’s Laura Alexander were recognized by name as the authors of this report.

Senator Blumenthal (D-CT) expressed concern over the impact of private equity investment on hospital consolidation and quality of patient care. He asked witness Professor Martin S. Gaynor of Carnegie Mellon University for his assessment of the role of hospital debt burden in necessitating hospital closures or mergers. Professor Gaynor then cited Richard Scheffler and Laura Alexander’s recent private equity report, noting that there is significant concern about private equity activity leading to consolidation and potentially diminishing quality of care due to misaligned incentives between private equity investors and patients and physicians.

Hear Senator Blumenthal and Professor Gaynor’s discussion of hospital consolidation and the private equity report during the May 19 hearing, beginning at about 1:25.

Inquiry Publishes Study on Hospital-Physician Vertical Integration and Outpatient Physician Prices Paid

Posted on By jordan

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.

FTC Microeconomics Conference Features Paper by Daniel Arnold

Posted on By jordan

Daniel Arnold and Christopher Whaley’s paper, “Who Pays for Health Care Costs? The Effects of Health Care Prices on Wages“, was presented at the Thirteenth Annual FTC Microeconomics Conference. It explores the relationship between rising health care costs and slower wage growth for employer-sponsored insurance.

Using hospital market structure and price assessed for Metropolitan Statistical Areas, they find hospital mergers lead to a $521 increase in hospital prices, a $579 increase in mean hospital spending, and a $638 reduction in wages. The results support that hospital mergers affect consumers through lower wages. Both the direct cost of medical care and the indirect cost to wages and should be considered in health care reforms.

Hear Chris Whaley present the paper on Day 1 (PM) of the conference.