Physician Organization Affiliation With Health Systems and Equitable Care Delivery

Regulatory agencies need to strike a balance between ensuring competitive health care markets and organizational affiliations that enable better care coordination.Over the past decade, health system acquisition of physician organizations has accelerated, potentially affecting care for socioeconomically and clinically vulnerable populations, including dually enrolled Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries. 1 Timbie et al 2 present findings from a novel and important study estimating changes in physician organization disparities for dually enrolled beneficiaries before and after affiliation with a health care system.They analyzed 7 years of Medicare Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System data paired with Internal Revenue Service Form 990 data, then integrated it with 100% Medicare fee-for-service claims data for beneficiary characteristics and to assess health care quality and utilization.The integration of these national and longitudinal datasets and the