UCLA Health expansion raises costs and concerns – Los Angeles Times

UCLA Health expansion raises costs and concerns  Los Angeles Times

On television, ads for UCLA Health show up behind the Dodgers’ home plate and in the background when Justin Herbert, the Chargers' quarterback, speaks after a game. At the Lakers' training facility, the health system’s logo appears on the court and throughout the building, under a marketing partnership that cost the university tens of millions of dollars. The ads are part of the public university health system’s strategy to increase the number of Southern Californians using its providers at its fast-growing number of clinics and hospitals. University officials say its expansion to five hospitals and 300 clinics — up from 150 locations a decade ago — has given more Southern Californians access to its academic medicine.

Last year, the system's clinics and hospitals recorded 4.2 million outpatient visits — more than five times the number in 2015. “As a public institution, we're trying to make sure that patients within our community have access to care,” said Dr. Robert Cherry, UCLA Health’s chief medical and quality officer. “That’s the primary and overriding concern, because there’s an acute demand for our services.” Yet healthcare economists point to repeated studies showing that hospital consolidation — where health systems expand, take over competitors and hire more of a region’s physicians — has become a leading driver of escalating health costs and insurance premiums, while