The Business of Healthcare: The Role of Physician Integration in Bundled Payments

Forthcoming at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

44 Pages Posted: 10 Mar 2020 Last revised: 10 May 2023

See all articles by Jan Vlachy

Jan Vlachy

Georgia Institute of Technology - The H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE)

Turgay Ayer

Georgia Institute of Technology - The H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE)

Mehmet Ayvaci

Jindal School of Management - The University of Texas at Dallas

Srinivasan Raghunathan

University of Texas at Dallas - Naveen Jindal School of Management

Date Written: May 1, 2022

Abstract

Under the prevailing fee-for-service payments (FFS), hospitals receive a fixed payment, while physicians receive separate fees for each treatment or procedure performed for a given diagnosis. Under FFS, incentives of hospitals and physicians are misaligned, leading to large inefficiencies. Bundled payments (BP), an alternative to FFS unifying payments to the hospital and physicians, are expected to encourage care coordination and reduce ever increasing healthcare costs. However, as hospitals differ in their relationships with physicians in influencing care (level of physician integration), the expected effects of bundling in hospital systems with varying level of physician integration remains unclear. There is a lack of both academic and practical understanding of hospitals' and physicians' bundling incentives. Our study builds on and expands the recent Operations Management literature on alternative payment models. We formulate game-theoretic models to study (1) the impact of the level of integration between the hospital and physicians in the uptake of BP, (2) the consequences of bundling with respect to overall care quality and costs/savings across the spectrum of integration levels. We find that (1) hospitals with low to moderate levels of physician integration have more incentives to bundle as compared with hospitals with high physician integration; (2) to engage physicians, hospitals need to gainshare savings with physicians, a mechanism that was not available in traditional FFS-based payment models; (3) when feasible, BP is expected to reduce care intensity, and this reduction in care intensity is expected to result in quality improvement and cost savings in hospital systems with low to moderate level of physician integration; (4) however, when bundling happens in hospital systems with relatively higher level of physician integration, BP may lead to underprovisioning of care and ultimately quality reduction, and (5) in an environment where hospitals are also held accountable for quality, the incentives for bundling will be higher for involved parties, yet quality vulnerabilities due to bundling can be exacerbated. Our findings have important managerial implications for policy-makers and payers such as CMS, and hospitals: (1) policy makers and payers should be aware of and account for potential negative effects of current BP design on a subset of hospital systems, including a possible quality reduction, and (2) in deciding whether to enroll in BP, hospitals should consider their level of physician integration and possible implications for quality. Based on our findings, we expect that a widespread use of BP may trigger further market concentration via hospital mergers or service-line closures.

Suggested Citation

Vlachy, Jan and Ayer, Turgay and Ayvaci, Mehmet and Raghunathan, Srinivasan, The Business of Healthcare: The Role of Physician Integration in Bundled Payments (May 1, 2022). Forthcoming at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3539596 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3539596

Jan Vlachy

Georgia Institute of Technology - The H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) ( email )

765 Ferst Drive
Atlanta, GA 30332-0205
United States

Turgay Ayer

Georgia Institute of Technology - The H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) ( email )

765 Ferst Drive
Atlanta, GA 30332-0205
United States

Mehmet Ayvaci (Contact Author)

Jindal School of Management - The University of Texas at Dallas ( email )

P.O. Box 830688
Richardson, TX 75083-0688
United States

Srinivasan Raghunathan

University of Texas at Dallas - Naveen Jindal School of Management ( email )

P.O. Box 830688
Richardson, TX 75083-0688
United States

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