Dive Brief:
- A new white paper from the New Jersey healthcare workers' union accuses the state's Department of Health of failing to adequately supervise hospitals in the state. The result, it says, has been hospital closures, bankruptcies and takeovers throughout the state.
- According to the report from the Health Professionals and Allied Employees, which is part of the AFL-CIO, 19 New Jersey acute-care hospitals have been closed or filed for bankruptcy since the late 1990s. Also eight nonprofit community hospitals have been sold to for-profit buyers, with at least six more comparable deals pending.
- The union is asking New Jersey officials to increase oversight at financially troubled hospitals, and enforce tougher measures for licensing, takeovers and staffing, along with other recommendations.
Dive Insight:
Hospitals are facing enormous challenges from several directions, so it might seem like a bad idea to regulate them further, given that some regs might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. That being said, closer regulatory scrutiny is called for in an era when the entire shape of medicine is changing, and embracing models such as ACOs, value-based payment, mergers, acquisitions and partnerships. As we have noted here previously, it's clearly a delicate issue to address, but keeping an eye out for car crashes in the making simply makes sense in an era with so many changes afoot.