Recently bought-out rural hospitals more likely to shutter maternal and neonatal services, limit mental health access - Entrepreneur Generations

Trends in the average number of hospital stays for maternal/neonatal care, surgical services, and mental health/substance use disorder, for merged vs. independent hospitals (Health Affairs graph; click the image to enlarge it)

Rural hospitals that have recently been acquired in a merger were more likely than their independent peers to shutter their maternal, neonatal and surgical care services, and more likely to limit access to mental health care, on-site diagnostic technologies, and non-emergency outpatient services, according to a newly published study in the journal Health Affairs. In essence, the researchers found, a merger might save a hospital from shutting down completely, but the hospital may be less responsive to community health-care needs afterward. Merged hospitals were also less likely to be critical-access hospitals, and more likely to be privately owned, have more beds than average, and be located in the South.

The study compared 172 rural hospitals that merged with larger systems between 2009 and 2016 and compared them with 549 hospitals that remained independent, using data from annual American Hospital Association surveys. In the year after hospitals were acquired, the average number that provided any maternal or neonatal services fell 6.7 percentage points more than independent hospitals. Two years afterward, that gap increased to 7.2 percentage points, but at three years post-merger and beyond, the gap virtually vanished.

One year after being acquired, merged hospitals were 5 percentage points less likely like to offer surgical services than independent hospitals. The statistical gap became insignificant two and three years post-merger. Analysis showed that locals weren't accessing those services elsewhere nearby, so the data suggests that the merger didn't generally hurt patient access to inpatient care.

Admissions for patients with mental health or substance use disorders stayed about the same for the first two years after hospitals were acquired, but increased during the same time period for independent hospitals. That and other data suggests that communities with merged hospitals may have reduced access to behavioral health care.

The study is the second from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and IBM Watson Health to examine the benefits and consequences to health-care access for people whose local hospital was acquired. The first one found that merged rural hospitals had lower overall lower death rates, especially from heart attacks.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2ZPJV8E Recently bought-out rural hospitals more likely to shutter maternal and neonatal services, limit mental health access - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet