Tell it like it is physician Terry Bennett is back in the news, detailing the problems he sees with the health care system. One interesting point he makes is how hospitals may be artificially causing a PCP access shortage, thus diverting patients to the emergency room, which generates revenue for the hospital:
The second issue involves the driving up of health care costs by what Bennett calls “corruption” at the hospital level.“Once hospitals came to own all or most of the practitioners in their area, they controlled how, when and where patients are seen, and, most importantly, how much it costs,” he said. “By simply diverting patients from outpatient care to the emergency room, a fee differential of $75 to about $1,000 occurs.”
Bennett believes this is done hundreds of times a day in larger hospitals, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for traditionally not-for-profit institutions. In order to utilize that revenue so as not to show a profit, hospitals spend it on extravagant construction schemes and new equipment acquisition.
“It is all done in order to bury huge profits being earned by what is, in principle, a not-for-profit institution,” Bennett contended.
(via a reader tip)
