A growing body of research is supporting what has long been a concern in health care: that physician ownership of hospitals may influence their referral decisions. That is the conclusion of a new American Hospital Association TrendWatch report, Physician Ownership and Self-referral in Hospitals: Research on Negative Effects Grows, released April 2.
According to the report, other negative impacts of physician hospital ownership include the fact that specialty hospitals focus on more profitable services, are associated with higher utilization, and serve fewer high-acuity, low-income, and uninsured patients--resulting in lost revenue to community hospitals. Citing the fact that 57 percent of physician-owned hospitals had margins at or above 10 percent in FY06 (as opposed to just 17 percent of other acute care hospitals with such margins), the report points out that these gains contribute to increasing systemwide health costs. Read the report.
