James Jan-Feb 2024 web - Flipbook - Page 72
you have a business model destined to fail.
Certificate of Need addresses this by protecting hospitals’
share of commercially insured
patients, which helps keep
hospital doors open and allows
hospitals to offer nonprofitable
services, including services
for the most fragile newborns.
Maintaining these protections
and expanding Medicaid would
allow hospitals to invest in more
infrastructure, technological
advances, and recruitment of
needed medical staff.
This offers a pathway to help
resolve problems such as maternity care deserts. In Georgia, approximately 70 percent of births
are paid for by Medicaid, and in
rural areas, that percentage is
even higher. Shoring up hospital
finances would allow more of
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JANUA RY/F E B RUA RY 2024
them to offer these vital, albeit
money losing, services.
Eliminating CON, as proposed by the Senate committee,
would not result in greater access
in these underserved communities, as proponents advertise.
For-profit providers aren’t
going to locate in regions where
profits aren’t attainable because
there aren’t enough patients with
private insurance. They aren’t
going to offer services that lose
money such as intensive care for
premature fragile infants.
Eliminating CON isn’t about
the underserved or addressing
our most pressing healthcare
needs. It’s about allowing private
equity investors from New York
and California and other for-profit
companies to siphon off hospitals’ highest-paying procedures to
achieve the highest-margin.
This will further destabilize
hospitals across the state. Without CON, well-insured Georgians
might have more options for hip
replacements and CT scans, but
nowhere to go when they’re in a
catastrophic car accident, suffer
a stroke or heart attack, or go
into labor to deliver a baby.
Despite many challenges
facing the healthcare system at
large, Georgia’s CON system has
worked. Over 40 years, state leaders have modernized the system
to keep up with the changes that
come with a dynamic, growing
state. Eliminating CON would
bring a jackhammer to a surgery
where a scalpel is needed— and
where a jackhammer would do
much more harm than good.
Monty Veazey is president & CEO of the
Tifton-based Georgia Alliance of Community
Hospitals.