Why are sneaky big hospitals gobbling up tiny doctors’ offices and changing their logos?
Ean Bett is a family medicine physician and board member of The Committee to Protect Health Care who lives in Columbus.
Recently, I saw a patient who had put off any medical care for over 20 years.
This patient, a woman in her early 60s, hadn’t had any preventive care or screenings until she came in at the behest of her granddaughter.
Her decision to avoid medical care for so long was based largely on the costs she anticipated to receive with it, as well as the potential for large surprise bills.
Unfortunately, her story isn’t unique. But fortunately, there is something Congress can do to help lower health care costs and reduce the number of patients feeling forced to avoid care.
My patients suffered under abortion ban. If Ohio GOP has way, they will again.
Between prescription drug costs, rising premiums, and more, it’s clear the United States is in the midst of a health care affordability crisis. Increasingly limited health care competition is leading to higher health care costs for patients, consumers, and taxpayers.
But there’s a sneaky reason some health care costs are going up in particular: large hospital systems aren’t just merging with each other, but also purchasing independent physician offices, then charging patients more to offer the same services.
You read that right — big hospitals buy local doctors’ offices, change the logo on the door, and raise the prices.
In fact, data show prices increase by more than 14 percent when a physician’s office is acquired by a hospital system, though in some cases the increased prices can be far greater.
On top of these higher prices, hospitals can also charge privately insured patients an additional “facility fee.”
For example, when a hospital bills a facility fee, the price of a biopsy can increase from $146 to a whopping $791.
To be clear, these fees can be charged even when the location of the health care service isn’t a hospital; it could be an outpatient clinic like an independent physician’s office, nowhere near a hospital complex, that was simply purchased by the hospital system.
We can all agree these extra charges aren’t fair. They’re costing patients, including Medicare recipients and privately insured patients, billions of dollars each year.
But doctors don’t just fear for our patients’ pocketbooks, we fear for their health.
We’re all too familiar with patients skipping care or putting off treatment due to high cost.
When a patient goes to their regular doctor’s office for a routine biopsy and then gets surprised with a higher bill because the office was bought by a hospital, that patient may decide to skip the next biopsy. A once-treatable cancer may worsen, becoming painful and life-threatening.
More from Ean Bett: The unvaccinated deserve respect and compassion
Our leaders in Congress have an opportunity to fix this shameful problem. They can pass bipartisan solutions to address the payment differences that incentivize hospitals to buy physician offices and charge more. These site-neutral payment measures would be crucial steps toward ensuring patients aren’t charged more for the same health care services just because of the logo on the clinic door.
It’s time for Congress to come together on a bipartisan issue that will save patients and taxpayers money and help improve health outcomes. Let’s urge our Ohio members of Congress to lead on this issue.
Ean Bett is a family medicine physician and board member of The Committee to Protect Health Care who lives in Columbus.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Shameful shell game has American pay more for same care under new logo
