With Mergers and Acquisitions, More Than Half of U.S. Physicians Now Affiliated With Health Systems

Consolidation of physicians and hospitals into health systems increased substantially from 2016 to 2018, according to a study conducted by AHRQ and published in Health Affairs. The study found that 51 percent of U.S. physicians were affiliated with health systems in 2018 compared with 40 percent in 2016. During the same period, the share of primary care physicians affiliated with health systems increased from 38 percent to 49 percent, and the share of hospitals affiliated with systems increased from 70 percent to 72 percent. Of 50 mergers and acquisitions that occurred, most involved relatively smaller systems, with only a few hospitals being acquired by larger systems. For-profit and church-operated systems had the largest increases in system size. This analysis was based on data from AHRQ’s Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, the nation’s first publicly available database of U.S. health systems. Access the study abstract.