As health care continues to move from traditional fee-for-service toward value-based payments, hospital leaders recognize the need to decrease costs and find ways to provide the scale to support a new health care delivery model. Mergers can provide an opportunity to create benefits of scale and deliver substantial quality benefits such as the standardization of clinical protocols.
In this research study for the American Hospital Association, Monica Noether and Sean May, compare hospitals that have undergone mergers or acquisitions with similar hospitals that have not, with respect to changes in hospital costs and publicly available measures of outcome. The research also included interviews with the executives of 20 hospital systems, representing a variety of geographic locations, scope (single area vs. multiple areas), ownerships and organization, who have considered and/or undertaken affiliations and mergers.
