Facility Fee Probed
About three weeks ago I blogged about how hospitals and administrators have discovered a new type of greed.
In the past, hospitals bought up doctors so they could control where the patients were being sent. In other words, all admissions, x-rays, labs, etc. came to the hospital that owned the practice. Well, since there are a lot of administrators to feed, the hospitals had to find a way to make more money off the doctors (and patients). Do you know that if the facility where you are treated is part of a hospital network, they can charge facility fees under the federal Medicare rules. One patient, in this article, had a $145, five-minute, skin tag removal in a doctor’s office located in a hospital-owned building and was charged a $705 facility fee for “operating room service.” Are you kidding me!?! I am so disgusted right now.
I looks like others are on to this sham as well. California’s attorney general is going after them for pushing up the price of medical care. Finally. This is a con game that needs to be shut down. Under the guise of improved efficiency, the hospital buys the practice and jacks up the price. Unfortunately stopping this practice may eliminate one more avenue for docs to escape the crooked insurance payment system. Now the only way left is CASH PAY! And that is a good thing.
Another example of what’s wrong with a profit-based healthcare system and why we need a nationalized comprehensive system. If medical practice, hospitals, etc., are just other ways to make profits in our society, the religion of which is greed, then why shouldn’t a hospital be the same as any other moneysucking corporation, operated for the exclusive benefit of shareholders and CEOs?
I’m in England right now, and have yet to meet a Brit who wishes their system was like ours. They certainly have problems, but none of them seem to relate to the lack of profit motive. The first question at a UK hospital or doc’s office is “Where does it hurt?”; the first question at a US hospital or doc’s office is “How are you going to pay?”
Let’s not forget about doctors who, under the guise of the “In- Office Ancellary Exception” to Stark, set up Path. and Radonc. arragements which are neither “in office” nor “ancillary” where these services already exist. They say it’s for patient convenience but, statistically, most exist where patients have to travel further than they would to already existing sites of service. The real risk of self-referral abuse exists in set-ups of this nature because of the economics of this system.