By Maria Castellucci | February 13, 2019
Hospitals that employ physicians don’t perform any better than other hospitals on certain quality measures, according to a new study.
The study, recently in the journal Medical Care Research and Review, also found that hospitals in concentrated markets reported lower patient satisfaction scores.
“There are less incentives to keep patients happy when they don’t have a competitor down the road to go to,” said Marah Short, lead author of the study and associate director of the Center for Health and Biosciences at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
To get the results, the study assessed the performance of 4,438 hospitals on 29 quality measures reported on Hospital Compare from 2008 to 2015. The authors found hospitals with employed physicians performed similarly as non-physician-employed hospitals on all of the 29 quality measures except for two after stricter analysis criteria was applied. The two measures were adherence to the continuation of beta blockers and readmissions for pneumonia patients.
