Physician offices are pretending to be hospitals and unfairly charging patients as a result, according to a July 26 opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal.
As increasing numbers of health systems buy up previously physician-owned practices, such practices are not only charging what hospitals would demand for the same services but also adding expensive facility fees on top of such services, write Bobby Jindal and Charlie Katebi.
Mr. Katebi is deputy director of the Center for a Healthy America at the America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank, and Mr. Jindal is the former governor of Louisiana and a former assistant secretary of HHS.
Hospitals across the country have been charging facility fees if medical services are performed in sites they own outside of the hospital setting. One patient in Ohio was charged a $1,262 fee for receiving arthritis treatments in an outpatient clinic, 10 times more than she had previously paid for the same treatments in the same building from the same physician, according to the editorial.
"More Americans than ever are paying these dishonest fees as large hospitals buy up the practices of local physicians," Mr. Jindal and Mr. Katebi write. By 2020, more than half of physicians worked for a hospital or a practice owned by a hospital, the authors write.
There are a number of proposed and passed legislative actions in Congress and at state level to address such "dishonest billing."
"Large hospital systems have exploited our nation's outdated billing systems to foist gigantic bills on Americans," according to the writers. "Bringing much-needed transparency in hospital billing will deliver more affordable care and put patients back in control."