Affordable Care Act (ACA) regulations effectively halted the creation of physician-owned hospitals, researchers say.
But the trade association Physician Hospitals of America (PHA) says that conclusion is largely incorrect.
Elizabeth Plummer, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Accounting, Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, and William Wempe, Ph.D., an associate professor in the department, studied 106 physician-owned hospitals in Texas, where about 20 percent of the hospitals have this model. They compared them with a control group of hospitals not owned by physicians to see their response to ACA rules.
Medscape noted that proponents of physician-owned hospitals say that patient satisfaction is high and that “they are well-positioned to improve care and population health and reduce costs; critics say they have incentives to order excessive tests and improperly refer patients to facilities in which the physicians have financial interests.”
The researchers wrote: “Moreover, physician-owned hospitals may cherry-pick the marketplace to secure patients with good general health who seek specialized and highly profitable medical treatment, reducing other hospitals’ bottom lines and their ability to provide indigent care.”
To read the Medscape article on this, please hit this link.
