Hospital Consolidation: Affordability and Access Concerns for Patients

Join us for a webinar discussing hospital consolidation and its impact on health care prices, affordability, and access to care for patients. 

This webinar will include a discussion of the relationship between consolidation, market concentration, and health care prices in Connecticut from 2016-2021, including shifts in select types of care following consolidation. The webinar will also present an overview of a Georgia hospital system’s consolidation activities, subsequent facility closures, and its impact on access to care low-income and Black patients, including patient experiences documented by Georgia Watch. It will also cover messages that resonate across the political spectrum and policy solutions successfully advanced in a conservative state legislature. Finally, the presentation will include a discussion of the role of religious hospitals in consolidation trends and the resulting impact on access to reproductive health care services.

Ending with a Q&A session, participants will also have the opportunity to engage with the presenters and discuss how hospital consolidation affects patients and ways to navigate consolidation while ensuring patients maintain access to affordable care. This webinar is designed for policymakers, healthcare advocates, researchers, and anyone invested in understanding hospital consolidation and exploring policy solutions.

Date and Time

November 18, 2024
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EST 

Speakers

• Corwin Rhyan, Health Management and Policy PhD Student, University of Michigan
• Liz Coyle, Executive Director, Georgia Watch
• Michelle Sternthal, Director of Government Affairs, Community Catalyst
• Alexandra Allen, Policy Analyst, Healthcare Value Hub, Altarum

Resources

• Impacts of Connecticut Hospital and Health Care System Consolidation (2016-2021)
• An Action Toolkit for Communities Facing Hospital Consolidation
• Health Care Consolidation: Background, Consequences, and Policy Levers
• The Rise Of Health Care Consolidation And What To Do About It
• State Healthcare Consolidation Tracker
• Statute Oversight Authority – Merger Review
• PESP Private Equity Hospital Tracker
• Private Equity Investment in Physician Practices: Legal and Policy Responses
• What Happens When Private Equity Takes Over a Hospital
• Private Equity Buyouts in Healthcare: Who Wins, Who Loses?