Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal in response to the recent opinion piece, "The ObamaCare Effect: Hospital Monopolies." In his letter, Mr. Umbdenstock negates the article's supposition that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will lead to hospital conglomerates and extinguish competition, suggesting in fact the integration occurring will lead to improved care.
The op-ed in the Wall Street Journal purports that while hospital consolidation can yield positive effects if done properly — such as disseminate best practices and quality initiatives — the consolidation occurring today that has been spurred by the PPACA is taking away competition, which can have profoundly negative effects for consumers.
According to the article, without a mechanism to ensure free-market forces keep hospital prices in check, the inevitable effect will be "higher health insurance deductibles and copays for insured Americans, and in the case of Medicare and Medicaid, higher taxes."
Mr. Umbdenstock's letter to the WSJ editor suggests the piece is looking at healthcare consolidation through a "rearview mirror" instead of looking into the changing healthcare landscape in the future.
"We all want hospitals to continue the good work of coordinating care, and integration across facilities is a particularly good way for hospitals to organize themselves to do so," Mr. Umbdenstock wrote. "Coordination requires the kind of teamwork that often works best when everyone is under the same ownership umbrella. There are lots of reasons for this. Out-of-date laws and regulations premised on keeping hospitals and doctors at arms' length are still in force – that's why they had to be suspended in the [Affordable Care Act] to create [accountable care organizations]. Also, hospitals need capital and must be good credit risks now more than ever to pay for and maintain expensive, but necessary, technology like EHRs and to scale up to meet and exceed new quality measures.
More fundamentally, the hospital field is realigning itself to adapt to a rapidly changing environment in which new technologies will change how and where healthcare is delivered, new competitors will offer many of the services previously only available at the hospital and consumers will have the tools to be real shoppers for healthcare based on price and value. Viewing changes in the hospital field through the rearview mirror of yesterday's regulations isn't a luxury consumers want or can afford."