Practice-Hospital Consolidation Increasing for Many Specialties
The level of integration of certain primary care practices into health systems and hospitals more than doubled in recent years, with steeper increases seen in the fields of oncology and cardiology, according to research published in the July issue of Health Affairs, according to a report in Medscape.
Although so-called vertical integration has been much discussed in healthcare, little is known about which specialties are most affected. Therefore, Sayeh S. Nikpay, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and colleagues examined vertical integration in different specialties between 2007 and 2017 using data from an SK&A survey that covers 75% of all US office-based physicians in their practices.