Specialty hospitals: the economics and policy issues they pose

Specialty hospitals are not a new phenomenon. From psychiatric and tuberculosis hospitals to children's and eye hospitals, they have long existed. The current interest lies in the development of single specialty hospitals for certain conditions or illness such as cardiology or orthopedics for which such hospitals were previously uncommon or non-existent. We include physician-owned surgical hospitals in our definition of single specialty hospitals. Some have claimed that these specialty hospitals (hereafter SSH) are an efficient way of producing services by concentrating them in one institution. They argue that SSHs avoid inefficiencies of scheduling and use of facilities not expressly designed for the illness or condition. Critics contend that doctors are simply trying to get the general hospital's profits and the ultimate impact will be a financial weakening of the general hospital. They argue that the cross-subsidy from these procedures and services are necessary to give general hospitals the ability to provide services to the uninsured and the poor. This debate led to a 30-month moratorium on new specialty hospitals which was lifted in August 2006. General acute care hospitals have responded by denying privileges to physicians who own or participate in competing SSHs. The appropriateness of such economic credentialing will be investigated. Further, we shall examine issues associated with Medicare pricing structures that encourage the development of SSHs as well as self-referral rules for physicians involved with SSHs. The real issue which has not been addressed is whether specialty hospitals create more value for the patient than the traditional acute care hospitals.