Vertical Integration Has Negative Impacts on Patient Outcomes

Although many health systems are moving toward vertical integration by acquiring private practices, the strategy may be hurting the bottom line and patients. A newly published study examined how vertical integration impacts patients undergoing colonoscopies and their subsequent healthcare costs using data from over 2.6 million visits.

According to Robert O’Neill, “The study found that when independent physicians integrated with a hospital, they changed their care practices (for example, by reducing the number of patients they put under deep sedation) and increased their throughput (measured by the number of patients they treated). Specifically, the integrated physicians reduced their use of deep sedation by about 3.7 patients for every 100 treated. However, patients of integrated physicians experienced “a significant increase in both major post-colonoscopy complications such as bleeding (3.8 per 1,000 colonoscopies) and other complications such as cardiac or nonserious GI symptoms (5.0 and 3.3 per 1,000 colonoscopies, respectively).””

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(Source: Harvard Kennedy School, March 2^nd, 2023)