Becker's Spine Review

45 HEALTHCARE NEWS 8 hospitals cutting inpatient care By Ayla Ellison Several hospitals ending inpatient care last year cited lower patient volume as the reason for scaling back services. Below are eight hospitals that announced plans to end inpatient care in 2021. 1. Plantation (Fla.) General Hospital, part of Nashville, Tenn.- based HCA Healthcare, stopped providing inpatient care and is converting to a freestanding emergency room operating under the direction of a nearby medical center. Physicians and other employees of Plantation General transitioned to a new hospital that HCA opened in Davie, Fla., about six miles away, on Nov. 15. Leaders said focusing all resources on the new hospital, HCA Florida University Hospital, will allow HCA to serve more pa- tients throughout Broward County. 2. Community Hospital Long Beach (Calif.) closed its emergency department and ended inpatient acute care, a move that allows it to avoid about $75 million in upgrades needed to meet seismic requirements. e hospital's operator, MWN Community Hospi- tal, cited low patient volume as another reason for the transition. Community Hospital Long Beach's inpatient occupancy averages about 32 percent. e hospital plans to offer behavioral health, wellness and urgent care services. e transition is expected to take several months. 3. Tyler Memorial Hospital in Tunkhannock, Pa., ended surgical and acute inpatient care Sept. 17, but the hospital continues to of- fer emergency and outpatient services. e 48-bed hospital scaled back services aer experiencing a decline in patient volume over the past four years. e hospital's daily inpatient census has been less than 10 patients since 2013, according to the Rocket-Courier. 4. One Brooklyn Health's Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in New York City ended inpatient services July 1 as part of a planned transition. e facility will be turned into a medical village offering emergency services and primary, speciality and post-acute care. 5. MercyOne Oakland (Neb.) Medical Center ended inpatient and emergency care July 1 aer years of declining volumes. Clinics at MercyOne Oakland and its affiliate, Lyons (Neb.) Family Medi- cine, remain open. 6. Catholic Health's Sisters of Charity Hospital, St. Joseph campus, in Cheektowaga, N.Y., transitioned into an outpatient and ambu- latory care center in May. Under the transition, the hospital closed its intensive care unit and ended inpatient services. e changes at the St. Joseph campus were announced in March by the hospital's Buffalo, N.Y.-based parent company, Catholic Health. 7. Community HealthCare System closed the emergency room and all inpatient beds at its hospital in St. Marys, Kan., on June 4. 8. St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., ended COVID-19 inpa- tient services in May. COVID-19 care was one of the last remain- ing inpatient services at St. Joseph's Hospital, which gradually shut down inpatient services over several months. n CommonSpirit eyes sale of fourteen hospitals By Ayla Ellison C hicago-based CommonSpirit Health is in discus- sions to negotiate an affiliation agreement to trans- fer ownership of 14 Midwest hospitals, according to financial documents released Nov. 16. CommonSpirit said it is currently working toward an agree- ment with an undisclosed third party to transfer ownership of 13 critical access hospitals and one full-service tertia- ry hospital along with their associated clinics and home health operations. The hospitals are in North Dakota and Minnesota. CommonSpirit first disclosed that the facilities were being held for sale in financial documents released in Septem- ber. The disclosure came about four months after Com- monSpirit and Duluth, Minn.-based Essentia Health aban- doned a deal that would have transferred the 14 hospitals to Essentia. CommonSpirit, formed in 2019 through the merger of San Francisco-based Dignity Health and Englewood, Co- lo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, reported net income of $269 million on revenues of $8.5 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30. In the same period a year earlier, the 140-hospital system posted net income of $800 million on revenues of $7.7 billion. n 2 ophthalmologists ordered to pay $170M for Medicare fraud By Ariana Portalatin T wo Texas ophthalmologists must pay $170,553,350 in penalties for fraudulently billing Medicare, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas said Nov. 18. Mustapha Kibirige, MD, and Emelike Agomo, MD, operated the Outreach Diagnostic Clinic in Houston. A whistleblower complaint made by a former employee at the clinic alleged that between 2006 and 2012, the two physicians billed Medicare for glaucoma tests with an improper reimburse- ment code that resulted in higher reimbursements. The U.S. sued the practice in 2015 in connection to the allegations. The court found that the physicians submitted 14,450 false claims to Medicare. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes ap- plied a $11,803 penalty to each false claim, resulting in the final amount the physicians must pay. n

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