Department of Veteran Affairs Roadmap to Patient Experience

When Integration Tightens Too Much: Patient Experience with Physician Communication and Overall Hospital Ratings in U.S. Acute Care Hospitals

This grant-funded research report from The University of Texas Health Center at Houston offers the first national evidence on how physician–hospital integration models influence patient experience—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzing six national datasets from 2019 and 2022, the study finds that tightly integrated models were associated with lower patient ratings and less resilience in