The Washington Post reports that Congress has found a new way to attack the proposed 10% cuts in medicare reimbursement-renew the moratorium on physician-owned specialty hospitals which estimates show would reduce medicare expenditures by 2.9 billion and would result in not having to cut fee schedule.
Currently there are about 180 such animals-mostly in cardiac and orthopedic specialties. According to the article:
Critics say that when doctors steer patients to a hospital they own, it gives them an incentive to put profits above the patient’s health by ordering more tests or procedures than are necessary. They argue that physician-owned hospitals siphon off the most lucrative, easy-to-treat patients, leaving more complex and costly cases, as well as the poor and uninsured, to community hospitals
The counter argument is that competition improves and the community hospital gets better.
CMS’s own sponsored studies do show increased utilization at physician specialty hospitals (there’s a surprise) and in separate studies show that they are about the same or “as good or better” than traditional hospitals.
How about this idea: If physicians have their own specialty hospital or their own referral for profit (PT, DME, Surgical Center) cut their fees 10% and leave the rest of us alone?
And by the way, where is PT in this article and why is it not included or bundled (to use a medicare phrase) with the specialty hospital argument? Why are they highlighting Wichita as the mecca of specialty hospitals and not Baton Rouge, LA as the mecca of POPTS?
Thoughts?
