The U.S. Government Accountability Office's offices in Washington. Credit: demerzel21/Adobe Stock
Analysts who want to measure the impact of U.S. physician practice consolidation on the cost, supply and quality of care need a better way to tell which physicians are consolidated.
Leslie Gordon, a director at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, gave that assessment earlier this week in a report summarizing a GAO analysis of physician consolidation.
The GAO defined "physician consolidation" to mean situations in which a physician works for a private equity firm, a hospital, an insurance company or some other entity other than an organization owned and managed by physicians.
"No single data source exists to accurately identify physicians who work in consolidated practices and those who remain independent," Gordon wrote in the report.
To prepare the GAO report, researchers had to conduct manual internet searches to track physician practice acquisitions. The researchers found
"Challenges in measuring physician employment, practice ownership, and affiliation could contribute to gaps in understanding the extent and effects of physician consolidation by hospital systems, corporate entities, and private equity firms," Gordon warned.
One problem is that each research team might take a different approach to identifying consolidated medical practices and measuring consolidation, Gordon warned.
The GAO found some studies indicating that physician practice consolidation with hospitals and private equity firms can increase costs, but it found little information about the impact of acquisitions by insurers or about the impact of any type of consolidation on patients' access to care.
What it means: Employers and benefits advisors worry that health care provider consolidation could be driving up health plan claim costs.
U.S. senators have asked about the effects of hospital and physician practice consolidation on patients' health.
States have raced to draft laws and regulations designed to slow or increase oversight for health care sector consolidation.
But even the federal government has no simple way to tell if a physician's practice should be classified as being consolidated.
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