IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/17316.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Vertical Integration and Optimal Reimbursement Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Afendulis
  • Daniel Kessler

Abstract

Health care providers may vertically integrate not only to facilitate coordination of care, but also for strategic reasons that may not be in patients' best interests. Optimal Medicare reimbursement policy depends upon the extent to which each of these explanations is correct. To investigate, we compare the consequences of the 1997 adoption of prospective payment for skilled nursing facilities (SNF PPS) in geographic areas with high versus low levels of hospital/SNF integration. We find that SNF PPS decreased spending more in high integration areas, with no measurable consequences for patient health outcomes. Our findings suggest that subjecting integrated providers to higher-powered reimbursement incentives, i.e., less cost-sharing, may enhance medical productivity. More generally, we conclude that it may be efficient for purchasers of health services (and other services subject to agency problems) to consider the organizational form of their suppliers when choosing a reimbursement mechanism.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Afendulis & Daniel Kessler, 2011. "Vertical Integration and Optimal Reimbursement Policy," NBER Working Papers 17316, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17316
    Note: EH IO LE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17316.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1998. "Exclusive Dealing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 64-103, February.
    2. Cuellar, Alison Evans & Gertler, Paul J., 2006. "Strategic integration of hospitals and physicians," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 1-28, January.
    3. Dwayne Banks & Elliott Parker & Jeanne Wendel, 2001. "Strategic interaction among hospitals and nursing facilities: the efficiency effects of payment systems and vertical integration," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(2), pages 119-134, March.
    4. Robinson, James C, 1996. "Administered Pricing and Vertical Integration in the Hospital Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(1), pages 357-378, April.
    5. Cutler, David M, 1995. "The Incidence of Adverse Medical Outcomes under Prospective Payment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(1), pages 29-50, January.
    6. Ciliberto, Federico & Dranove, David, 2006. "The effect of physician-hospital affiliations on hospital prices in California," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 29-38, January.
    7. Newhouse, Joseph P. & Byrne, Daniel J., 1988. "Did Medicare's Prospective Payment System cause length of stay to fall?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 413-416, December.
    8. R. Konetzka & Edward Norton & Sally Stearns, 2006. "Medicare payment changes and nursing home quality: effects on long-stay residents," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 173-189, September.
    9. Sayaka Nakamura & Cory Capps & David Dranove, 2007. "Patient Admission Patterns and Acquisitions of “Feeder” Hospitals," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 995-1030, December.
    10. Ellis, Randall P. & McGuire, Thomas G., 1990. "Optimal payment systems for health services," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 375-396, December.
    11. Mark V. Pauly, 1979. "The Ethics and Economics of Kickbacks and Fee Splitting," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 344-352, Spring.
    12. Christopher C. Afendulis & Daniel P. Kessler, 2007. "Tradeoffs from Integrating Diagnosis and Treatment in Markets for Health Care," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 1013-1020, June.
    13. Ellis, Randall P., 1998. "Creaming, skimping and dumping: provider competition on the intensive and extensive margins1," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 537-555, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Timothy Bresnahan & Jonathan Levin, 2012. "Vertical Integration and Market Structure [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    2. H. Frech & Christopher Whaley & Benjamin Handel & Liora Bowers & Carol Simon & Richard Scheffler, 2015. "Market Power, Transactions Costs, and the Entry of Accountable Care Organizations in Health Care," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(2), pages 167-193, September.
    3. Jing Gu & Neeraj Sood & Abe Dunn & John Romley, 2019. "Productivity growth of skilled nursing facilities in the treatment of post-acute-care-intensive conditions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-14, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher Afendulis & Daniel Kessler, 2011. "Vertical integration and optimal reimbursement policy," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 165-179, September.
    2. Baker, Laurence C. & Bundorf, M. Kate & Kessler, Daniel P., 2016. "The effect of hospital/physician integration on hospital choice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-8.
    3. Gaynor, Martin & Town, Robert J., 2011. "Competition in Health Care Markets," Handbook of Health Economics, in: Mark V. Pauly & Thomas G. Mcguire & Pedro P. Barros (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 499-637, Elsevier.
    4. Koch, Thomas G. & Wendling, Brett W. & Wilson, Nathan E., 2017. "How vertical integration affects the quantity and cost of care for Medicare beneficiaries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 19-32.
    5. Timothy Bresnahan & Jonathan Levin, 2012. "Vertical Integration and Market Structure [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    6. Richards, Michael R. & Seward, Jonathan A. & Whaley, Christopher M., 2022. "Treatment consolidation after vertical integration: Evidence from outpatient procedure markets," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    7. Avi Dor, 2001. "Administered Prices and Suboptimal Prevention: Evidence from the Medicare Dialysis Program," NBER Working Papers 8123, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Konetzka, R. Tamara & Stuart, Elizabeth A. & Werner, Rachel M., 2018. "The effect of integration of hospitals and post-acute care providers on Medicare payment and patient outcomes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 244-258.
    9. Ian McCarthy & Sean Shenghsiu Huang, 2018. "Vertical Alignment Between Hospitals and Physicians as a Bargaining Response to Commercial Insurance Markets," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 53(1), pages 7-29, August.
    10. Kevin E. Pflum, 2015. "Physician Incentives and Treatment Choice," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 712-751, October.
    11. Xufeng Qian & Louise Russell & Elmira Valiyeva & Jane Miller, 2005. "New Evidence on Medicare's Prospective Payment System: A Survival Analysis based on the NHANES I Epidemiologic Followup Study," Departmental Working Papers 200506, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    12. Oddvar Kaarboe & Luigi Siciliani, 2011. "Multi‐tasking, quality and pay for performance," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(2), pages 225-238, February.
    13. Berta, Paolo & Callea, Giuditta & Martini, Gianmaria & Vittadini, Giorgio, 2010. "The effects of upcoding, cream skimming and readmissions on the Italian hospitals efficiency: A population-based investigation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 812-821, July.
    14. Jeannette Brosig‐Koch & Burkhard Hehenkamp & Johanna Kokot, 2017. "The effects of competition on medical service provision," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(S3), pages 6-20, December.
    15. Li‐Lin Liang, 2015. "Do Diagnosis‐Related Group‐Based Payments Incentivise Hospitals to Adjust Output Mix?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(4), pages 454-469, April.
    16. Karen S Palmer & Thomas Agoritsas & Danielle Martin & Taryn Scott & Sohail M Mulla & Ashley P Miller & Arnav Agarwal & Andrew Bresnahan & Afeez Abiola Hazzan & Rebecca A Jeffery & Arnaud Merglen & Ahm, 2014. "Activity-Based Funding of Hospitals and Its Impact on Mortality, Readmission, Discharge Destination, Severity of Illness, and Volume of Care: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-1, October.
    17. Mingshan Lu & Ching‐to Albert Ma & Lasheng Yuan, 2003. "Risk selection and matching in performance‐based contracting," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(5), pages 339-354, May.
    18. Papanicolas, Irene & McGuire, Alistair, 2015. "Do financial incentives trump clinical guidance? Hip Replacement in England and Scotland," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 25-36.
    19. Cooper, Zack & Gibbons, Stephen & Skellern, Matthew, 2018. "Does competition from private surgical centres improve public hospitals' performance? Evidence from the English National Health Service," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 63-80.
    20. Elin Johanna Gudrun Hafsteinsdottir & Luigi Siciliani, 2010. "DRG prospective payment systems: refine or not refine?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(10), pages 1226-1239, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17316. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.