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November 16, 2018

Hospital mergers boost costs in New Haven area

Yale New Haven Health has acquired most of its neighboring competitors.

An analysis by the New York Times published Thursday has found that the New Haven area has seen the most significant decline in competition among hospitals in the nation in the wake of aggressive expansion by Yale New Haven Health. The region has also reported among the highest increases in hospital prices nationwide.

According to the report, New Haven-area patients, who already pay on average three times more for hospital admissions than elsewhere in Connecticut, saw prices rise by 25 percent between 2012 and 2014, compared to 7 percent statewide.

Yale New Haven Health acquired its only competitor in New Haven, the Hospital of Saint Raphael, in 2012. In recent years, it has also acquired Bridgeport Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London and Westerly Hospital in Rhode Island.

Earlier this year, Milford Hospital announced that it would also be acquired by Yale New Haven Health, merging with the system’s Bridgeport facility. The only independent hospital remaining in the New Haven area is Griffin Hospital in Derby.

In the Times article, Yale New Haven Health officials defended the higher rates the system charges private insurers as appropriate for a top-tier academic medical center, and said it had invested $200 million to update the former Saint Raphael’s campus.

The Times examined the price of hospital admissions in 25 metropolitan areas nationwide during the period from 2010 through 2013, the peak period for hospital mergers. Data showed that the price of an average hospital stay increased significantly in most areas, rising between 11 percent and 54 percent in the years after mergers.

“These systems are empire-building, there’s no question,” Jill Zorn, a senior policy officer for the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, told the Times. “But to whose benefit?”

To read the New York Times article on hospital mergers, click here.

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