Physician Management Companies and Neonatology Prices, Utilization, and Clinical Outcomes.

Background And Objectives: Physician management companies (PMCs) acquire physician practices and contract with hospitals to provide physician management services. We evaluated the association between PMC-NICU affiliations and prices, spending, utilization, and clinical outcomes.

Methods: We linked commercial claims to PMC-NICU affiliations and conducted difference- in-differences analyses comparing changes in prices paid for physician services per critical or intensive care NICU day, length of the NICU stay, physician spending (total paid amount for physician services during stay), spending on hospital services (total paid amount for hospital services during stay), and clinical outcomes in PMC-affiliated versus non-PMC-affiliated NICUs.

Association of Physician Management Companies and Private Equity Investment With Commercial Health Care Prices Paid to Anesthesia Practitioners.

Importance: Physician management companies (PMCs), often backed by private equity (PE), are increasingly providing staffing and management services to health care facilities, yet little is known of their influence on prices.

Objective: To study changes in prices paid to practitioners (anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists) before and after an outpatient facility contracted with a PMC.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective cohort study used difference-in-differences methods to compare price changes before and after a facility contracted with a PMC with facilities that did not and to compare differences between PMCs with and without PE investment.

Association of Surprise-Billing Legislation with Prices Paid to In-Network and Out-of-Network Anesthesiologists in California, Florida, and New York: An Economic Analysis.

Importance: Several states have passed surprise-billing legislation to protect patients from unanticipated out-of-network medical bills, yet little is known about how state laws influence out-of-network prices and whether spillovers exist to in-network prices.

Objective: To identify any changes in prices paid to out-of-network anesthesiologists at in-network facilities and to in-network anesthesiologists before and after states passed surprise-billing legislation.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective economic analysis used difference-in-differences methods to compare price changes before and after the passage of legislation in California, Florida, and New York, which passed comprehensive surprise-billing legislation between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2017, to 45 states that did not.

Are Integrated Plan Providers Associated With Lower Premiums on the Health Insurance Marketplaces?

As the health insurance industry becomes more consolidated, hospitals and health systems have started to enter the insurance business. Insurers are also rapidly acquiring providers. Although these "vertically" integrated plan providers are small players in the insurance market, they are becoming more numerous.