Importance: Rural hospitals are increasingly merging with other hospitals. The associations of hospital mergers with quality of care need further investigation.

Objectives: To examine changes in quality of care for patients at rural hospitals that merged compared with those that remained independent.

Design, setting, and participants: In this case-control study, mergers at community nonrehabilitation hospitals in Federal Office of Rural Health Policy-eligible zip codes during 2009 to 2016 in 32 states were identified from Irving Levin Associates and the American Hospital Association Annual Survey. Outcomes for inpatient stays for select conditions and elective procedures were derived from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases. Difference-in-differences linear probability models were used to assess premerger to postmerger changes in outcomes for patients discharged from merged vs comparison hospitals that remained independent. Data were analyzed from February to December 2020. 

... Conclusions and relevance: These findings suggest that rural hospital mergers were associated with better mortality outcomes for AMI and several other conditions. This finding is important to enhancing rural health care and reducing urban-rural disparities in quality of care.

See full article here>

###