Boutique hospitals suck

A recent study published in JAMA indicates that specialty cardiac hospitals might be cathing everyone, whether they need it or not. They found that in areas where new hospitals opened, there were more revascularization procedures (CABG, PCI) than in areas where new cardiac programs opened at regular hospitals (thus it's not just the "if you build it, they will come" issue of adding resources to an area). Given the fact that these specialty hospitals are also exempt from the requirement that they provide emergency services (thus they don't have ER's and don't really benefit the community) and tend to skim well reimbursed patients from general hospitals (who are left with the expensive, uninsured, patients and less funding to provide care for them), this merely adds to my general hatred for these hospitals. That being said, my partial ownership of the local bariatric center has been very lucrative.