BUSINESSHearty markets: Number of hospitals devoted to cardiac care on the riseAll over the country, physicians are investors as well as practitioners in a boom of stand-alone heart hospitals.By Cheryl Jackson, amednews staff. March 18, 2002. What's it taking for doctors to fix hearts these days? There are different sounds around the country. In Indianapolis, it's taking drills and girders and hammers and saws. Listen in Milwaukee, and you'll hear pounding and clanging. There's a whirl of construction in Fresno, Calif., as well, where doctors are working with a hospital system to build a separate hospital devoted exclusively to cardiac care, as another hospital in the same network expands to include cardiovascular services. Across the country, communities are seeing physician groups either build on their own or partner with hospital systems to put up new facilities to provide cardiac services. "This is going to kind of a boomlet of the future," said Howard Berliner, professor of health policy at the Milano Graduate School at New School University in New York. What's going on in these markets represents a convergence of trends: doctor-owned facilities meeting high-grossing heart hospitals meeting hospitals that partner with physicians to keep them happy. The doctor-owned facilities accomplish two things, doctors say. They allow physicians more decision-making power to provide better patient care. And they add income. It appears that no one is tracking the amount of hospital construction in general or heart hospital building in particular. But market watchers and analysts say the new heart facilities are posing a threat to general acute care hospitals' already suffering bottom lines. And there will be more competing physician groups owning competing heart hospitals in communities, market watchers say.
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Copyright 2002 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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