Hospital chain accused of conflict of interest

As another example of a conflict of interest in health care, Kaiser Health News published accusations that a large hospital chain created incentives to encourage doctors to admit more patients. Hospitalizations are expensive for patients (or at least their payers), but can be helpful to hospitals' bottom lines. Who decides whether a patient in an emergency room gets admitted? Doctors who might be employed by the hospital (or might have some other formal relationship). To be clear, critics of the hospital chain were the ones making the accusations; Kaiser Health News was only reporting on those accusations. As is typical for many Kaiser Health News articles, this article starts with a personal encounter of someone with the healthcare system and in this case, reports that patient regrets agreeing to be hospitalized. Although the patient had insurance, she was still expected to pay several thousand dollars.

A single story is not enough to substantiate accusations of a widespread policy. However, the article references a whistleblower who indicated that the hospital chain threatened his employment if he did not admit more patients. Attorneys representing the whistleblower also found higher rates of admission among Medicare patients at the hospitals in this chain versus other hospitals. Surprisingly, the federal government declined to pursue the case.