Does Hospital Consolidation Exacerbate Disparities in Care? Evidence from Multistate Data on Medicaid Births

This project aims to evaluate the impact of hospital consolidation on hospital-level admissions volumes and quality of care for births financed by Medicaid. Using a differences-in-differences analysis, the project will: 1) examine whether hospital mergers impact the type of hospitals Medicaid patients go to to give birth; 2) assess how mergers lead to changes in quality and outcomes for labor and delivery admissions; and 3) test for racial disparities and disparities linked to insurance status. Data will be drawn from the Hospital Cost Utilization Project State Inpatient Data, the American Hospital Association Annual Survey, and the Health Care Pricing Project’s hospital mergers database.