title: The effect of hospital/physician integration on hospital choice.
abstract: In this paper, we estimate how hospital ownership of physicians' practices affects their patients' hospital choices. We match data on the hospital admissions of Medicare beneficiaries, including the identity of their physician, with data on the identity of the owner of their physician's practice. We find that a hospital's ownership of a physician dramatically increases the probability that the physician's patients will choose the owning hospital. We also find that patients are more likely to choose a high-cost, low-quality hospital when their physician is owned by that hospital.
authors.affiliation: Stanford University, USA; NBER, USA.
authors.forename: Laurence C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Baker
authors.affiliation: Stanford University, USA; NBER, USA.
authors.forename: M Kate
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Bundorf
authors.affiliation: Stanford University, USA; NBER, USA. Electronic address: fkessler@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Daniel P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Kessler
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D006278:Medicare; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians; D014481:United States
keywords: Cost and quality of care; Health economics; Hospital choice; Hospital integration