Physician Ownership

Many health care companies have merged in recent years, but nothing symbolized the high-dollar, high-stakes nature of the trend like the proposed $14 billion merger of Texas health care giants Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas and Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston.

An Austin physician group, one of the city’s largest hospital systems, and an outside hiring firm are engaged in a tug of war that pits corporate finances against the physicians’ view of what’s best for their patients, a three-month investigation by Texas Medicine magazine found.

Gov. Greg Abbott weighed in recently on the Affordable Care Act’s moratorium on physician-owned hospitals, telling Texas’ Republican lawmakers in Washington to support legislation to repeal those restrictions.

The Physicians Advocacy Institute is urging federal lawmakers to re-examine health care policies to ensure they promote competition and put private physicians on a level playing field with hospitals and other corporate entities.

In December, Congress approved and President Donald Trump signed the first significant update to the United States’ tax code in more than 30 years.

The Affordable Care Act’s moratorium on physician-owned hospital growth has limited patients’ access to high-quality health care and unnecessarily increased costs for the Medicare program and its patients, a coalition of state medical associations told federal lawmakers last month.