Using Medicare data to measure vertical integration of hospitals and physicians.

ABSTRACT: Researchers, healthcare providers, and policy makers have become increasingly interested in the cost and quality effects of vertical integration (VI) between hospitals and physicians. However, tracking VI is often financially costly. Because the Medicare Data on Provider Practice and Specialty (MD-PPAS) annual dataset may be more cost-effective for researchers to access than private data sources, we examine the accuracy of MD-PPAS in identifying VI by comparing it to physician and hospital affiliations reported in Blue Cross Blue Shield Texas (BCBSTX) PPO claims data for 2014-2016. The BCBSTX data serve as a gold standard, because physician-hospital affiliations are based on the insurer's provider contract information. We merged the two datasets using the physician National Provider Identi

SUBMITTER: Ho V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7036068 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature