NPR: managed health care

ANNOUNCER
As health care reform sweeps the nation, medical facilities are accepting the idea that managed care will be in their future. But the competition that comes with change is hard for others to accept. From Wenatchee, Diane De Rooy has the story.

DIANE
A year ago, the Wenatchee Valley Clinic saw the handwriting on the wall, and the message was: managed health care is coming. Since day surgery is a large part of managed health care, the clinic began negotiating with Central Washington Hospital for use of its facilities.

But according to Dr. Chris Stahler, clinic board chairman, hospitals have very high built-in costs, prohibitive to the basics of managed care. Central Washington Hospital preferred not to negotiate on prices, he says.

The clinic felt compelled to construct its own facility, adjacent to its own doctors’ offices, to keep surgical costs down. The hospital saw that it could lose a great deal of market share, since clinic doctors perform more than half of the day surgeries now using hospital facilities.

Stahler sees more opportunity for cooperation between the two entities. The Rockwood Clinic in Spokane uses a surgery facility built for and leased to them by Sacred Heart Hospital, he says.

But negotiations between the hospital and clinic broke down repeatedly. Bulldozers are now busily taking up the asphalt where they are breaking ground for the clinic’s new day surgery facility.