The Impact of Organizational Boundaries on Healthcare Coordination and Utilization

Leila Agha, Keith Ericson and Xiaoxi Zhao

No 28179, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We measure organizational concentration—the distribution of a patient's healthcare across organizations—to examine how firm boundaries affect healthcare efficiency. First, when patients move to regions where outpatient visits are typically concentrated within a small set of firms, their healthcare utilization falls. Second, for patients whose PCPs exit the market, switching to a PCP with 1 standard deviation higher organizational concentration reduces utilization by 21%. This finding is robust to controlling for the spread of healthcare across providers. Increases in organizational concentration predict improvements in diabetes care and are not associated with greater use of emergency department or inpatient care.

JEL-codes: D23 I11 L14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com and nep-hea
Note: AG CF EH IO LE LS PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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