More than 400 facilities called long-term acute care hospitals have opened across the national in the last 25 years. They specialize in providing care to seriously ill patients. Few of these institutions have doctors on staff, and most are owned by for-profit companies.
As As Alex Berenson of the New York Times reports, many of these for-profit hospitals have been scrutinized for their wide profit margins and lack of on-staff doctors during off-peak hours. Select Medical Corporation is a corporation that owns 89 long-term care hospitals nationwide. These facilities have been cited at a rate almost four times that of regular hospitals for serious violations of Medicare rules. Medicare inspection reports of many of these hospitals reveal preventable patient injuries, including bedsores (pressure sores decubitis ulcers) and deaths, as well as inadequate staffing numbers with high turnover.
Website Resources:
Long-Term Care Hospitals Face Little Scrutiny, New York Times, Alex Berenson, February 9, 2010.
