Consolidation of Providers Into Health Systems Increased Substantially, 2016–18
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Associated Project
Coordinating Center for Comparative Health System Performance
Prepared for:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Key Findings
- The share of physicians affiliated with health systems increased by 11 percentage points, from 40 percent in 2016 to 51 percent in 2018.
- In 2018, 49 percent of primary care physicians were affiliated with systems—an increase from 38 percent in 2016.
- Substantial consolidation among health systems as a result of mergers or acquisitions at the system level also occurred from 2016 to 2018.
Provider consolidation into vertically integrated health systems increased from 2016 to 2018. More than half of US physicians and 72 percent of hospitals were affiliated with one of 637 health systems in 2018. For-profit and church-operated systems had the largest increases in system size, driven in part by a large number of system mergers and acquisitions.
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