The U.S. House of Representatives today approved a children’s healthcare bill that includes provisions banning physicians from referring patients to hospitals in which they have an ownership interest.
Section 623 of HR. 2, which authorizes and expands the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, includes several restrictions on both the growth of existing physician-owned hospitals and the development of new ones, warns Molly Sandvig, executive director of Physicians Hospitals of America, the national advocacy group for physician-owned hospitals. Only about nine of the country’s 199 physician-owned hospitals would be able to apply for the right to grow under the bill’s "very stringent and limiting requirements," according to PHA’s estimates. If signed into law, Ms. Sandvig says the bill would:
prohibit existing hospitals from increasing the percentage of their physician ownership;
require hospitals currently under development to have obtained a Medicare Certification number by Jan. 1, 2009, in order to be exempt from rules restricting Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals to which the physician-owners self-refer;
revoke the whole hospital exemption to the Stark laws for any physician-owned hospitals opened after Jan. 1, 2009; and
impose various disclosure requirements on physician self-referrals.
The Senate version of the legislation doesn’t address the issue of physician self-referrals, and PHA is urging its members to lobby their congressmen to keep that language out of the final bill. Democrats in the House and Senate as well as President-elect Barack Obama support the expansion of SCHIP.
—Irene Tsikitas
