FORT SMITH, May 20 2008- St. Edward Mercy Medical Center today offered clarification of its Medical Staff Financial Conflict of Interest Policy and its stance on physician-owned hospitals. “It’s an unusual position to be in,” said Bill Senneff, the hospital’s chief operating officer, “responding to an open letter in the newspaper. However, we are a community hospital and want to be as open as we can.”
 
Senneff was following up on a recent news story published in response to a half-page newspaper advertisement appearing in the April 24 edition of the Southwest Times Record. The ad posed a number of questions pertaining to the hospital’s Financial Conflict of Interest policy, which deals with physician ownership interests and financial incentives. The ad stated it was paid for “by multiple Physicians who practice at St. Edward Mercy Medical Center.”

Due to the anonymous nature of the ad, we can only speculate that these are doctors who do not want to find themselves in conflict with our policy. While the 5-year-old agreement is confidential, recent amendments did not create new policy. The agreement was amended in order to clarify a few points with regard to physicians and their immediate families who maintain an ownership interest in another hospital. The policy has always required that a physician with an ownership interest in a competing hospital must divest of that interest or forfeit clinical privileges at St. Edward Mercy.  

Citing an April Trendwatch from the American Hospital Association entitled: Physician Ownership and Self-Referral in Hospitals, Senneff said, “There’s a lot of research out there telling us that specialty hospitals get the patients with the most resources and the fewest complications.”

As the name suggests, specialty hospitals typically handle cases in only one or two medical specialties, and are generally much smaller, with a few dozen beds. Most, but not all, are physician-owned. They do not handle emergency cases, as a rule, and in fact, the majority use 9-1-1 for emergency response in their own facilities. Our concern, as a referral hospital, is that any specialty or urgent care facility that might be built would not have an effective emergency and critical care response on their campus, able to provide emergency care before during and after it is needed.

While there are no specialty hospitals currently in the Fort Smith region, advertisements have appeared in various publications in recent weeks for a new, 24-bed hospital and urgent care clinic. In accordance with the St. Edward Mercy policy, the physician-owners would not have clinical privileges at the hospital.

Our primary objective is to take care for patients in our communities. But we do have a fiduciary responsibility to protect our institution. At St. Edward Mercy, we invest millions of dollars every year to cover expenses that are unique only to full service hospitals.