Grantees in the News

In a piece in the Health Policy Blog on hospital ownership of physician practices, John Graham of the National Center for Policy Analysis featured findings from J. Michael McWilliams’s HCFO-funded study, which found that hospital acquisition of physician practices drives up costs.

The National Academy for Social Insurance co-sponsored a conference to mark the launch of the new Solomon Center for Health Policy and Law at Yale Law School. The Solomon Center will focus on the governance, business, and practice of health care in the United States. The conference brought together experts and practitioners from the health care industry, government, and academia to discuss integration, consolidation, and competition in the wake of the Affordable Care Act.

Retail clinics have proliferated over the last 10 years, as patients are drawn by their convenience, walk-in policies, and price transparency.

Congress recently approved a budget agreement that includes a provision to change how Medicare reimburses physicians owned by hospitals—in part a response to the recent increasing trend in physician-hospital integration. The New York Times Upshot reports that the budget deal would prevent future physician practices from receiving higher payments by merging with a hospital.

As hospitals acquire more doctor practices, what is the effect on the prices for medical services? In a HCFO-funded study, J. Michael McWilliams, Harvard Medical School, and colleagues sought to answer this question. They found that hospital-owned physician practices have been associated with higher outpatient care prices.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly the Institute of Medicine, announced the election of 70 new regular members and 10 international members, including former HCFO grantee Vincent Mor, Brown University.

In response to proposed mergers among major health insurance companies as well as a changing health care landscape under the Affordable Care Act, both the House and the Senate are holding a series of hearings to examine competition in the health care market. At the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on health insurance consolidation and its impact on consumers, multiple testimonies cited HCFO-funded work.

The LA Times recently reported on proposed mergers among leading U.S. health insurers and the implications for consumers’ premiums. The article quoted HCFO-researcher, Erin Trish, Ph.D., University of Southern California, who stated that, "When insurers merge, there's almost always an increase in premiums," but she added that consolidation among insurers could lead to lower negotiated rates with hospitals.

In a piece comparing Medicare Advantage (MA) rates to traditional Medicare (TM), Austin Frakt of The Incidental Economist featured findings a HCFO-funded study. Frakt notes that MA seems to follow TM in its prices to hospitals, indicating that MA network contracting is more focused on quality than price.

Reducing low-value care is one strategy to avoid harming patients while constraining U.S. health care costs.