The Effects of Home Health Agency Consolidation on Patients' Quality of Care

Abstract

We analyze a data set consisting of home health agencies registered with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to determine how consolidation trends affect the quality of care provided to patients. We find that increasing market consolidation has little to no impact on a chosen set of quality of care metrics that encompass the many facets of the patient experience. While our control variables lack interpretative power for the most part, we find that privately- owned home health agencies tend to slightly underperform their counterparts.