Hospital lobbying groups are mobilizing to blunt any efforts on Capitol Hill to reverse a ban on physician-owned hospitals, including releasing a new analysis that claims such facilities cherry-pick patients. The analysis released Tuesday by the American Hospital Association and Federation of American Hospitals is part of a general effort by the groups to keep in place a ban on physician-owned hospitals passed alongside the Affordable Care Act back in 2010. But critics say the hospital industry wants to stifle competition as the industry becomes more consolidated, Fierce Healthcare reports.
“The growth of physician-owned hospitals was restricted by Congress for good reasons and those remain valid today as this analysis shows,” said Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the AHA, in a statement.
The ACA prohibited any physician from building or owning a hospital and limited the growth of any facility that was already in operation. The goal of the ban was to combat facilities that supposedly admitted primarily healthier patients and only admitted patients on private insurance. Read more.
