Can governments do it better? Merger mania and hospital outcomes in the English NHS

Martin Gaynor, Carol Propper and Mauro Laudicella

No 8802, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The literature on mergers between private hospitals suggests that such mergers often produce little benefit. Despite this, the UK government has pursued an active policy of hospital mergers, arguing that such consolidations will bring improvements for patients. We examine whether this promise is met. We exploit the fact that between 1997 and 2006 in England around half the short term general hospitals were involved in a merger, but that politics means that selection for a merger may be random with respect to future performance. We examine the impact of mergers on a large set of outcomes including financial performance, productivity, waiting times and clinical quality and find little evidence that mergers achieved gains other than a reduction in activity. Given that mergers reduce the scope for competition between hospitals the findings suggest that further merger activity may not be the appropriate way of dealing with poorly performing hospitals

Keywords: Event study; Hospital mergers; Political influence; Quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 L13 L32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (49)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8802 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Can governments do it better? Merger mania and hospital outcomes in the English NHS (2012)
Working Paper: Can governments do it better? Merger mania and hospital outcomes in the English NHS (2012)
Working Paper: Can governments do it better? Merger mania and hospital outcomes in the English NHS (2012)
Working Paper: Can governments do it better? Merger mania and hospital outcomes in the English NHS (2012)
Working Paper: Can governments do it better? Merger mania and hospital outcomes in the English NHS (2012)
Working Paper: Can Governments Do It Better? Merger Mania and Hospital Outcomes in the English NHS (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8802

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP8802

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().