Health Plan Payments Can Motivate Tighter Integration Between Physicians and Hospitals

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A study led by Gloria Bazzoli, Ph.D., at the Institute for Health Services Research and Policy at Northwestern University, along with coprincipal investigators Lawton Burns, Ph.D., also at Northwestern, and Robert Miller, Ph.D., at the University of California – San Francisco, examined the relationships between physician-hospital arrangements and managed care organizations to determine their effects on organizational integration and on costs for hospital based care. They found that global capitation did motivate tighter integration between physicians and hospitals during the study period, but they did not find a link between integration and cost of care.