A new study has been released by the Federation of American Hospitals and the American Hospital Association underscoring the “threat to patient care of expanding physician-owned hospitals (POHs) in rural communities.”
The study specifically said that “if a new POH opens in the same market as a full-service rural hospital, the full-service hospital’s margins would decrease significantly as the POH siphons off healthier and commercially insured patients, risking access to 24/7 care and community jobs.”
High-ranking executives with both organizations who released the study wrote that POHs are “notorious for selectively picking the healthiest and wealthiest patients and allowing them to open near full-service rural hospitals.” Congress enacted a ban on new POHs 15 years ago given the dangers they pose to patient care.
Prior analyses found that “POHs treat less medically complex patients and those who are more likely to have commercial health insurance coverage, which reimburses hospitals at higher rates than public payors, such as Medicaid and Medicare, which often fail to cover the full costs of providing care. POHs also provide fewer emergency services, report on fewer quality measures, and have higher readmission measure penalties compared to other hospitals.”
