HSC is out with another study on local markets, and this time it’s looking at specialty hospitals. Not a new tune. HSC finds that purchasers in three local markets where there are plenty of specialty hospitals believe that the hospitals add to overall healthcare costs without improving quality. While purchasers may get lower prices from the new hospitals, they perceive that more procedures are recommended by physicians driving up their number of procedures and therefore overall costs. In addition, traditional community hospitals have been forced to compete by building new facilities, the costs of which get passed onto purchasers in the end, and have been raising their prices for services that specialty hospitals do not offer to compensate for their losses where the specialty hospitals have taken their business.

Yup, it’s all a scam. A war between docs and hospitals with the payers (and the taxpayer) picking up the tab. Of course, as discussed multo–times on THCB, if this was done within the context of some type of fixed budget, then maybe specialty hospitals or teams would be found to be the best way of delivering care. But in a FFS-based cost-unconscious system, they’re just adding to the death of health care affordability by a thousand cuts.