Joe Paduda writes for WorkCompWire:

The two major drivers of medical outcomes and medical spend are increasing consolidation in healthcare and cuts to Medicaid and health insurance premium subsidies. The combination will drive up medical spend and disability durations in the coming years.

Whether it’s workers’ comp outcomes or costs and outcomes for group health or Medicare patients there’s precious little evidence that consolidation reduces costs or improves outcomes... For work comp, WCRI’s excellent investigation of vertical consolidation indicates durations are longer and costs higher. And it’s not just same-market consolidation; those not-good “results” of mergers happen to be far too common in cross-market consolidation.

Read the full article here.  Paduda cites WCRI's Impact of Vertical Integration in Workers’ Compensation: visit its page on our website for details, including information on how you can get a copy.

(Also possibly of interest: WCRI will be publishing a study devoted to loss of healthcare coverage in the next couple of months.  Watch this space!)