Consolidation of Long-Term Services & Supports-What if?

Our good friend and prolific author, Professor Marshall Kapp, let us know about his most recent article, Speculating About the Impact of Healthcare Industry Consolidation on Long-Term Services and Supports.  The article is published as the lead article in volume 25, issue 2 of the Annals of Health Law.   Here is the abstract of the article

The current health industry consolidation movement promises to exert an important and powerful array of effects on numerous different population groups seeking or receiving health services in a variety of different health care settings. Particularly regarding the potential impact of health industry consolidation on individuals contemplating, seeking, or obtaining long-term services and supports (LTSS), little is yet known but much may be plausibly speculated. This article joins in that speculation, but attempts to advance the constructive consideration of the topic by offering some suggestions for a research agenda to investigate specific empirical questions about consolidation’s impact on LTSS and thereby generate evidence and knowledge that can be used to either reduce or prevent negative aspects of consolidation for LTSS, on one hand, or foster and facilitate the achievement of positive effects, on the other.

Professor Kapp concludes:

The current, and probably continuing, consolidation of health services providers, producers, and sellers of healthcare products, as well as third-party payers for health services and products, inevitably will exert a variety of impacts on healthcare consumers generally and within specific contexts. Actual and potential consumers of LTSS, as well as their families, are likely to be affected in unique ways, differing to a large extent depending on the way that respective groups of consumers now finance their own LTSS. Little significant data is available yet regarding such effects, but speculation nonetheless abounds. This article joins in this basically uninformed but plausible speculation exercise but, I hope, adds constructively to the discussion by suggesting the rudiments of a health services research agenda that leads eventually to evidence-informed public policy making and private sector conduct that optimizes consolidation’s impact on consumers’ interests in access to, affordability of, and quality received in the realm of LTSS.

Thanks Marshall for letting us know and congratulations on the publication!