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"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. We develop a formal model to show how integration solves task allocation problems between organizations and test the predictions of the model, using a large and rich patient-level dataset on hospital discharges to nursing homes and home health care. As predicted by the theory, we find that vertical integration allows hospitals to shift patient recovery tasks downstream to lower cost delivery systems by discharging patients earlier and in poorer health, and integration leads to greater post-hospitalization service intensity. While integration facilitates a shift in the allocation of tasks, health outcomes are no worse when patients receive care from an integrated provider. The evidence suggests that by improving the allocation of tasks, integration solves coordination problems that arise in market exchange"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

This article provides evidence of the growing similarity in capacity of for-profit and nonprofit hospitals in the United States. Between 1960 and 2000, the typical nonprofit hospital shrank from being 3 times as large as the average for-profit hospital to being merely one-third larger. Analysis of aggregate hospital data implies that the convergence in capacity is replicated by the growing similarity between nonprofit and for-profit hospitals in the number of admissions and average lengths of stay. An analysis of hospital-level data reveals that the convergence was driven primarily by entry, exit, and ownership switches, rather than expansions or downsizing of existing hospitals. Further research is needed to uncover the driving forces that led to this growing similarity between nonprofit and for-profit hospitals.