Physician-owned hospitals are seeking waivers, deploying lobbyists and navigating around restrictions on their expansion included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The PPACA barred new physician-owned hospitals from being built and blocked the approximately 275 existing ones from growing if they wanted to remain Medicare-eligible, restrictions added by lawmakers and backed by some hospital lobbying groups who claimed physician-owned hospitals were raking in high profit margins from unnecessary procedures, according to the report. In response, some physician-owned hospitals, like Forest Park Medical Center in Dallas, no longer accept Medicare patients in order to bypass federal restrictions.
Lobbying group Physician Hospitals of America plans to launch a campaign on Congress this week to encourage a bill that would allow its member hospitals to expand.
The report, citing data from the American Hospital Directory and American Hospital Association, notes that many physician-owned hospital margins have reached a lofty 20 to 35 percent lately, compared with community hospitals' 7 percent as of 2010.
Physician-owned hospitals accounted for roughly half of the 100 best performing hospitals under Medicare's value-based purchasing program, according to the report.
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