Nueterra is keeping a high profile among supporters of America’s physician-owned hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers. That commitment is what brought Chairman Dan Tasset and David Ayers, president of Nueterra’s Surgical Facilities Division, to a recent Physician Hospitals of America conference in Dallas.

There was a very large turnout for the conference, at which industry leaders discussed the next steps for physician-owned hospitals following passage of the health care reform law. Members discussed the legislative and legal implications for their hospitals, options for expansion, development and restructuring, and how to further affect the regulatory and administrative processes.

The new law creates a strange paradox:  while opening insurance coverage to 34 million more Americans, it prohibits physician investors from creating new facilities in their own communities and restricts their ability to expand and enhance existing ones. That means a lot more patients and fewer facilities to treat them. The new law puts the country on a track where we may well be facing a shortage of treatment options for patients. In a country that supposedly is built upon the free market system, this defies logic.

For that reason Nueterra, together with the PHA, is ratcheting up our commitment to the patient-physician relationship, which is the bedrock of our health care system. We believe that physicians have the right to invest in and participate in the governance of hospitals and surgery centers. Their patients have the right to choose to be treated there or not.

More and more intrusive government regulations are driving doctors out of the profession earlier than they would retire normally, as well as keeping younger people from entering medicine at all. The new reform law exacerbates the situation even more.

Curtailing market competition is not the answer. Nueterra will continue to fight for physician rights.

Nueterra continues to champion the cause of physician ownership for ambulatory surgical centers and surgical hospitals with members of Congress and other elected officials. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that is the new health care reform law imposes serious roadblocks to physician ownership going forward.

As soon as the bill was signed into law, plans for 24 new physician-owned hospitals were suddenly nixed and the 47 such facilities currently under construction will be severely tested to meet new regulations in order to open. And it all has resulted because the owners and operators of community hospitals represented by the American Hospital Association don’t want competition. It’s as if General Motors was able to pass a law that bars Ford from producing new vehicles.

That’s why Nueterra and St. Luke’s Health System recently hosted Kansas Congressman (and candidate for Senate) Jerry Moran on a tour of our joint venture, St. Luke’s South Surgery Center. We wanted to make him aware of the difficult environment that physician-owned facilities now face and we had a good discussion of the issues.

Nueterra and partners have also held discussions along these lines with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Missouri Sen. Christopher Bond.

Our message remains clear: Physicians need to have leadership positions and be involved in the governance of facilities in which they have financial stakes. Onerous regulations simply will send entrepreneurs elsewhere with their investment dollars. We believe that the supply of young physicians will also be curtailed as they realize their financial options are more limited.

Nueterra is committed to telling elected officials the truth about physician-owned facilities – we deliver quality care in patient-centered environments that result in extremely high levels of patient and physician satisfaction.

We are willing to risk those values in the open marketplace. Why aren’t others?