Physician-owned hospitals and outpatient imaging centers are increasing in number, skimming insured patients off the top and leaving the uninsured and Medicaid patients to the hospitals:
One of the ironies of this is that many of the same docs who were shocked, saddened, devastated, when the hospital announced it was closing were the same ones who referred their paying patients to the ambulatory surgery centers and free-standing imaging centers. I don’t think they knew how negatively this impacted the hospital until it was too late.
The Happy Hospitalist says this is just the beginning.
