Major hospital groups are pushing back against physician-owned hospitals amid calls to eliminate Medicare’s ban on physician self-referral to new POHs and restrictions on their growth.
In 2010, the Affordable Care Act enacted various protections against POH, including a ban on expanding the capacity of existing Medicare-certified POHs unless they meet certain exceptions and a moratorium on the establishment of new Medicare-certified POHs.
Eradicating these protections will not generate competition or reduce costs, and lead to an uneven playing field with POHs continuing to leverage their position to cherry-pick patients and defer emergent care to community providers, according to a blog post written by American Hospital Association Executive Vice President Stacey Hughes and Federation of American Hospitals President and CEO Chip Kahn, Becker’s reports. Read more.
