Study: Specialty hospitals and competition

The Center for Studying Health System Change has released a report on competition between safety-net, general hospitals and specialty hospitals. HealthLeaders is covering the report here. Interestingly, none the three markets studied -- Indianapolis, Little Rock, Ark., and Phoenix -- operate under a Certificate of Need law.

The HealthLeaders report doesn't do justice to the report as a whole. I'd recommend reading the actual report.

A few interesting tidbits:

Safety net hospitals reported little impact on service volume because of the presence of specialty hospitals, since safety net hospitals generally do not compete intensely for patients with private insurance or Medicare. According to one safety net hospital respondent, “Our competitors don’t want us to fail…they don’t want us to compete, but don’t want us to go away because then they’d have to deal with our patients.”

...

Broader market changes and the worsening economic recession—characterized by job loss, increased number of uninsured, more difficult debt financing, reduced or stagnant reimbursement by private payers—likely will adversely affect specialty hospitals as well. Specialty hospitals burgeoned in times of relative economic prosperity. How specialty hospitals in the three communities will cope with a shrinking base of privately insured patients and reductions in elective procedures already reported by hospitals around the country remains to be seen.