MergerMania
I’m printing the report’s final conclusions in full because
they are important. Every local campaign to prevent closures and mergers needs
to have this in mind when they take on those pesky experts who ‘always know
best’;
“Conclusions
The literature on mergers between private hospitals suggests
that such mergers often produce little benefit. Despite this, the UK government
has pursued an active policy of hospital merger. These consolidations are
initiated by a regulator, acting on behalf of the public, and justified on the
grounds that they will improve financial performance, productivity or patient
care. We examine whether this promise is met by exploiting the fact that
between 1997 and 2004 in England around half the acute general hospitals were
involved in a merger.
We examine the impact of mergers on a large set of outcomes
including financial performance, productivity, waiting times and clinical
quality and find little evidence that mergers achieved gains. While admissions
and staff numbers fell relative to the pre-merger position, which is desirable
if the regulator wanted to remove spare capacity, labour productivity did not
rise and financial deficits increased. And while most measures of quality were
unchanged, there is no indication of an improvement in quality to offset this
poorer financial performance. Further, in already concentrated markets, mergers
brought about lower reductions in capacity. This suggests smaller gains in
these markets.
We therefore conclude that there seems to be little hard
evidence that this attempt at government planning of hospital care has achieved
much more than simply reducing hospital admissions. This removal of capacity
may reduce patient welfare. We show that waiting times rose post merger; travel
distances may also rise when hospitals are closed. Consolidation also
downstream reduces potential competition, which has been shown in the UK market
to have some beneficial effects on patient outcomes and length of stay (Gaynor
et al 2010, Cooper et al 2011, Bloom et al 2010). Given this, it seems the
English government should carefully consider potential losses before allowing
more mergers between short term general hospitals.”
Worse for
patients, worse for staff, cost more, did less but better for managers.
‘May reduce
patient welfare” – kinda says it all, really.
=======//=======
I’m going to give us all a break (you can put the soggy ice
pack back in the fridge for now) because whenever I do serious stuff, I lose
nearly all my readers. 8 days ago I was getting over 30 hits a day – all gone
now (nearly but not quite all gone – thank you for staying with me)
A good friend has suggested to me that my Blog would do much
better if I just put up a video of myself doing a silly dance. Trouble is, he
is probably right. Mind you, he has problems e-mailing, so what does he know?
But I am going to go on going on. Later on I’ll take a look
at the ‘new’ policy of setting up independent ‘trusts’, and then letting them
go ‘bust’.
It’s a ‘Free Market capitalist’ way of bringing about mergers.
Except nothing is free and there is no market. Mind you it is the people’s
capital, until we let them squander it all away.
k
At the start of this series, I sent an e-mail to Bristol
University, warning them I’d been using their research, which seemed only fair.
In fact, it’s just the Centre for Market and Public Organisation that’s in
Bristol, the authors are based elsewhere.
One of the authors kindly sent me over a direct link to their
article, which is well worth a look;
(Luckily, between you and me, I think I managed to get away
with the whole ‘st#t-g#ek’ thing, phew!)
MergerMania
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
Oh and I’ve got a new graphic:
THE TRUST
D
IS BUST!
I fear its going to get some use.
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.comContact: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
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