As per a blog post by the AHA and Federation of American Hospitals, physician-owned hospitals aren’t good for patients, the integrity of the Medicare program, communities, or providers who happen to be in the business of caring for all patients, day-in, day-out, notwithstanding their ability to pay or their health condition.
The blog goes on to highlight the new data from one of the healthcare consulting firms, reaffirming the fact that the physician-owned hospitals cherry pick patients by avoiding the less profitable Medicaid as well as uninsured patients, treat less medically complex individuals, offer fewer emergency services, and at the same time rely on publicly funded 911 as well as acute care and community hospitals for such services when it comes to their own patients.
Apart from this, the blog also goes on to highlight how the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently reinforced the requirement of the ban on new physician-owned hospitals and the limitations on the progress of the existing facilities.
In the April 2023 inpatient perspective payment system proposed rule, CMS offered to reinstate the program integrity restrictions for the physician-owned hospitals thereby approved as high Medicaid facilities because of the risk for patients as well as the Medicare program.