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Gingrich calls on Congress to address specialty hospitals

Ambulatory Surgery Reimbursement Update, November 15, 2005

In an opinion piece printed in The Washington Post , Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives and founder of the Center for Health Transformation, expresses his concern about specialty hospitals that he says target easy and cheap cases to maximize profit.

In the piece, Gingrich supports the concept of a specialty hospital if it provides "better healthcare at lower cost for consumers." But what he opposes "the emergence of specialty hospitals that create special relationships with doctors designed to cherry-pick only the easy cases for certain hospitals," Gingrich writes.

Gingrich calls on Congress to:

• ". . . insist on hospital ownership rules that allow doctors to invest in specialty hospitals in which they do not practice but that forbid doctors from having ownership in a hospital in which they do practice"
• ". . . consider establishing a law requiring that specialty hospitals take all the cases in their area of specialization, the difficult and complex (and expensive) as well as the simple and profitable"

To read Gingrich's article, click here. (Registration required).

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