Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
This Rural Stretch Had Fewer Hospital Beds Per Person Than Afghanistan, So Residents Tried To Open Their Own
Not long after Beau Braden moved to southwest Florida to open a medical clinic, injured strangers started showing up at his house. A boy who had split open his head at the pool. People with gashes and broken bones. There was nowhere else to go after hours, they told him, so Dr. Braden stitched them up on his dining room table. They were 40 miles inland from the coral-white condos and beach villas of Naples, but Dr. Braden said that this rural stretch of Collier County, with tomato farms and fast-growing exurbs, had fewer hospital beds per person than Afghanistan. (Healy, 9/5)
Insurance premiums and outpatient prices spiked as California health systems have snatched up physician groups, new research shows. In 41 highly concentrated California counties, the percentage of hospital-employed physicians increased from about 25% in 2010 to more than 40% in 2016, according to a new Health Affairs study. (Kacik, 9/4)
There are several reasons a doctors’ practice owned by a hospital or hospital chain can charge higher prices. A hospital can tack on what’s called a facility fee, which pays for overhead costs like building maintenance. And a doctors’ practice acquired by a larger, well-known health system like Stanford or UCSF could seek to charge higher prices because of its parent’s name. (Ho, 9/4)
In other hospital news —
HCA Houston Healthcare has completed the acquisition of North Cypress Medical Center, a 139-bed hospital at 21214 Northwest Freeway near Huffmeister in the northwest Houston area. The hospital, founded by physicians in 2006, expands HCA's Gulf Coast network to 18 hospitals in the Gulf Coast division. The deal includes four freestanding emergency centers in Barker Cypress, Spring Cypress, Fairfield and Texas 249. (Feser, 9/4)
Portland's imperiled psychiatric center has seven more weeks before it could lose a crucial federal certification. The Oregon Health Authority confirmed Tuesday that Unity Center for Behavioral Health has until Oct. 31 to fix significant safety issues. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last month gave Unity officials a second list of problems to fix and extended the time Unity has to make improvements. It previously faced a deadline of Sept. 11. (Harbarger, 9/4)
