Study Finds Hospital Mergers Fail to Improve Patient Care Quality

The much-debated topic of hospital mergers and their impact on patient care has been brought to light once again in a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study, conducted by Harvard University researchers, found that hospital mergers did not lead to improvements in the quality of patient care, and in some cases, actually made it worse.

The researchers analyzed data from 246 hospitals that had been acquired and compared it to 1,986 control hospitals over a period of nine years. They looked at various aspects of hospital performance, including clinical processes, patient experience, mortality rates, and readmission rates.

The results were surprising, as they showed that hospital acquisitions were associated with a modest decline in patient experience, particularly in hospitals acquired by health systems with low-ranking scores for patient experience. Additionally, there was no significant change in 30-day readmission rates or mortality rates in acquired hospitals.

Study co-author Leemore Dafny summarized the findings in a tweet, stating that there is no systematic evidence that acquired hospitals improve in quality, and that the reorganization of the hospital landscape is not benefiting consumers on average.

While this study did not delve into the impact of hospital mergers on patient costs, other studies have shown that mergers of hospital systems and acquisitions of physician practices are correlated with higher healthcare costs.

The study was funded by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Nancy Beaulieu of the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School served as the lead author. This research sheds light on the complex and often controversial issue of hospital mergers and their effects on patient care.