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Atul Gupta and Catherine Ishitani Win 2025 NIHCM Research Award

Cited for “Breaking New Ground” in the Field of Hospital Operations

June 30, 2025

By:

Hoag Levins

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Atul Gupta, PhD, Catherine Ishitani, PhD, and colleagues have won the 2025 National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation’s (NIHCM) Research Award for their study of how corporatization affects the operating costs, prices, and patient outcomes of acquired hospitals.

Gupta is an LDI Senior Fellow and Assistant Professor of Health Care Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Ishitani is an LDI Associate Fellow and a newly graduated PhD from Wharton’s Health Care Management and Economics Department.

Hospital Comparisons

See the video and issue brief detailing the winning study’s findings.

Their study, published in the Aug. 24 issue of the Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, compared the operations of 101 hospitals that entered corporate ownership with similar hospitals that remained independent. Among other findings, the work reported that increases in the 90-day readmission rate after corporatization signaled the potential for reduced quality.

“The 2025 winners carry on NIHCM’s tradition of honoring the very best in American health care research,” said Avik Roy, President and CEO of NIHCM. “Our winners’ impactful work broke new ground in our understanding of how to improve the affordability and quality of health care.”

NIHCM is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on transforming health care through evidence and collaboration across a network of partners, including federal, state, and local governments, as well as leaders in public health, advocacy, academia, media, and the private sector. This was the 31st year of the organization’s awards program.

Other members of the honored research team were Elena Andreyeva, PhD, of the Texas A&M University School of Public Health; Malgorzata Sylwestrzak, Associate Vice President of Humana Health Care Research at Humana; and Benjamin Ukert, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at Texas A&M University School of Public Health.