Private practice remains strong despite an increase in hospital employment
Data from 2012 reveal that hospital employment is not as pervasive as had been assumed, although the percentage of physicians in solo practice continues to shrink
After exploring the issue of hospital ownership from several different angles, Kane and Emmons found that the association between increasing practice size and hospital ownership did not persist. Rather, they found that the “wider scope of practice in multispecialty groups, not practice size, drives hospital ownership.” They theorized that hospitals are more likely to buy primary care practices to gain a strong referral base, and this theory was borne out by the data, which showed that primary care physicians are more likely to report hospital ownership.1
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Two final comments
Kane and Emmons point out that their analysis doesn’t “capture relationships that are short of full employment” and, therefore, may underestimate “the degree of integration between physicians and hospitals.”1
Although the decline in solo practice may have been accelerated by reform measures in recent years, the shift was “already well underway in the early 1990s,” Kane and Emmons observed.1
