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How has Horizontal, Vertical, and Virtual Integration altered the Health Care Industry?

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How has Horizontal, Vertical, and Virtual Integration altered the Health Care Industry??? What is the difference between the three?

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The expert determines how Horizontal, Vertical and Virtual integration altered the Health Care Industry is determined. The differences between the three are given.

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Let's consider what horizontal and vertical integration, based on classical definitions, actually mean.

Horizontal integration is to assimilate processes that offer similar services. In economics, the primary example of horizontal integration is if, let's say, tire rim company assimilated a company that makes the rubber tires. They offer similar services: supplying the parts needed for a car to actually move. Together, they can pool resources and become one more efficient unit. If we translate this to a health care setting, we can say that horizontal integration is the assimilation of similar services that offer services that are similar enough in stage of progress (e.g. ambulatory, inpatient). This often translates into interprofessional teams that specialize in the same area. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy and orthopedics might form a unit by themselves that deals with long-term follow-up of surgical patients who had implants, for example. This allows them to pool their resources, both money and time, together in order to form a unit that communicates better (as they can figure out their best mode of communication themselves as a unit), that can come to decisions on how to spend money better (as they all understand each other positions more and are more likely to reach a ...

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