Table 1. Characteristics of PE- and Non−PE-Acquired Physician Practices at Baseline, 2015.
| Characteristic | Mean (SD) | SMD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PE-acquired | Non−PE-acquireda | ||
| Physician practices, No. | 578 | 2874 | NA |
| Charge/claim, mean $ | 322 (258) | 332 (326) | 0.03 |
| Allowed amount/claim, mean $ | 187 (136) | 178 (136) | –0.06 |
| Total No. | |||
| Unique patients | 94 (182) | 88 (172) | –0.03 |
| New patients | 72 (136) | 67 (132) | –0.03 |
| Encounters | 124 (237) | 118 (224) | –0.02 |
| E&M visits | 75 (188) | 72 (180) | –0.01 |
| Share of E&M visits >30 min | |||
| New patients | 0.26 (0.15) | 0.26 (0.21) | 0.01 |
| Established patients | 0.19 (0.17) | 0.18 (0.22) | –0.02 |
| Patient HCC score, median | 1.21 (1.05) | 1.28 (1.10) | 0.06 |
Abbreviations: E&M, evaluation and management; HCC, Hierarchical Condition Category; NA, not applicable; PE, private equity; SMD, standardized mean difference.
a
Independently owned physician practices identified using 5:1 caliper matching without replacement, requiring exact match on specialty and matches within 1 SD for continuous covariates (total No. of unique patients, total No. of encounters, median HCC score, and average allowed amount). The standardized bias was greatly reduced for all covariates after matching (eTable 4 in the Supplement) and was below 0.25 for all variables indicating negligible bias after inverse probability weighting.37