Dear Member of Congress:
We, the undersigned organizations, wish to express our support for the “Patient Access to Higher
Quality Health Care Act of 2017.” This common-sense legislation would repeal the controversial
moratorium on expansion and new construction of physician-owned hospitals (POH).
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a provision that strictly prohibits any new POH from
participating in Medicare or Medicaid. Furthermore, the ACA also prohibits existing POHs from
expanding unless they meet a very complicated set of criteria as part of a long application process.
These hospitals provide some of the highest quality care in the country and help meet a growing
demand for health care services, especially in rural areas.
Consumer Reports Magazine reported that hospitals run by physicians have been shown to run more
efficiently and have higher quality patient outcomes than those run by non-physicians or appointed
boards. And these hospitals are not just providing high-quality care and contributing to local economies
– they are saving the government money. An analysis by Avalon Health Economics found POHs are
saving Medicare $3.2 billion over ten years.
Concerns that POHs could have an incentive to serve only the most profitable patients have been
proven baseless. A comprehensive, peer-reviewed study published by the British Medical Journal
recently found that overall, “physician-owned hospitals have virtually identical proportions of Medicaid
patients and racial minorities and perform very similar to other hospitals in terms of quality of care.”
This arbitrary ban on new and expanded POHs is bad for our entire health care system and penalizes
patients who deserve the right to receive care at the hospital of their choice. POHs inject much-needed
competition into the hospital marketplace, incentivizing traditional hospitals to improve and innovate.
And POHs allow doctors, who know patient care best, to be more involved in some of the day-to-day
decision-making of the hospitals.
We urge Congress to put patients first and pass the “Patient Access to Higher Quality Health Care Act of
2017.”
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Read full letter here
