Monitoring Technology and Firm Boundaries: Physician-Hospital Integration and Technology Utilization

We study the relationship between physician–hospital integration and its relation to monitoring IT utilization. We develop a theoretical model in which monitoring IT may complement or substitute for integration and test these relationships using a novel data source. Physician labor market heterogeneity identifies the empirical model. We find that monitoring IT utilization is increasing in integration, implying that expanded firm boundaries complement monitoring IT adoption. We argue that the relationship between monitoring IT and firm boundaries depends upon the contractibility of the monitored information.

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