The Anatomy of a Hospital System Merger: The Patient Did Not Respond Well to Treatment

Martin Gaynor; Adam Sacarny; Raffaella Sadun; Chad Syverson; Shruthi Venkatesh

doi:10.1162/rest_a_01384

The Anatomy of a Hospital System Merger: The Patient Did Not Respond Well to Treatment

Martin Gaynor¹; Adam Sacarny²; Raffaella Sadun³; Chad Syverson⁴; Shruthi Venkatesh⁵

¹ Carnegie Mellon University and NBER · ² Columbia University and NBER · ³ Harvard University and NBER · ⁴ University of Chicago and NBER · ⁵ U.S. Federal Trade Commission

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2026

Abstract Despite the continuing U.S. hospital merger wave, it remains unclear how mergers change, or fail to change, hospital behavior and performance. We open the black box of hospital practices through a megamerger between two for-profit chains. Benchmarking the merger's effects against the acquirer's stated aims, we show they achieved some of their goals, harmonizing electronic medical records and sending managers to target hospitals. Postacquisition managerial processes were similar across the merged chain. However, these interventions failed to drive detectable gains in performance. Our findings demonstrate the importance of organizations for merger research in health care and the economy more generally.

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01384
Volume: 108 (1)
Pages: 272-281
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
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