A report published in the New England Journal of Medicine questions the essence of hospital mergers which has shown no improvement or in some cases decline in quality of patient care. This is one of the oft-cited reasons by hospitals for their meregrs and acquisitions, but the report has dented their claim.
Harvard University Researchers evaluated the performance of 246 hospitals 1,986 control hospitals on the parameters of clinical process, patient experience, mortality and rate of re-admission after discharge.
The study states that hospital mergers have lead to higher prices for commercially insured patients and modest decline in patient experience. The decline was however concentrated in hospitals acquired by health systems with low ranking patient experience.
Moreover it was observed that the acquired hospitals did not see any significant change in 30-day readmission rates or mortality rates. The effect on clinical process quality could not be precisely ascertained.
The study was funded by grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.