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.

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.