The Anatomy of a Hospital System Merger: The Patient Did Not Respond Well to Treatment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gaynor, Martin; Sacarny, Adam; Sadun, Raffaella; Syverson, Chad; Venkatesh, Shruthi
• 署名单位: Carnegie Mellon University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Columbia University; Harvard University; University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01384
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: quality-of-care; management-practices; prices; consolidation; COMPETITION; FIRMS

摘要

Despite the continuing U.S. hospital merger wave, it remains unclear how mergers change, or fail to change, hospital behavior and performance. We open the black box of hospital practices through a megamerger between two for-profit chains. Benchmarking the merger's effects against the acquirer's stated aims, we show they achieved some of their goals, harmonizing electronic medical records and sending managers to target hospitals. Postacquisition managerial processes were similar across the merged chain. However, these interventions failed to drive detectable gains in performance. Our findings demonstrate the importance of organizations for merger research in health care and the economy more generally.