New Hampshire is scrambling to search out sufficient staffed hospital beds to deal with the present surge in COVID-19 sufferers. Abruptly, politicians on the left and the appropriate are deeply involved concerning the low variety of hospital beds within the state. Which is type of maddening as a result of they’re those who created the scarcity within the first place.
For many years, state legal guidelines have severely restricted the state’s hospital capability. They nonetheless do.
Earlier than 2016, New Hampshire was one among many states with a Certificates of Want (CON) legislation that primarily required companies to show that a big medical gear or facility funding was wanted earlier than it might be accepted by the state. That legislation suppressed funding in new amenities and providers.
In 2016, the CON legislation was repealed, but it surely was changed with legal guidelines that created extra restrictions on hospital capability. Senate Invoice 481, handed that 12 months, added three main necessities into state legislation that limit hospital competitors.
- RSA 151:2-g mandates that each hospital “shall function an emergency division providing emergency providers to all people no matter skill to pay 24 hours day-after-day, 7 days every week.” This legislation prohibits the creation of any competing hospital providers that don’t additionally embrace a 24/7 emergency room. Conveniently, this legislation “shall not apply to any hospital licensed and working previous to July 1, 2016, which doesn’t function an emergency division.” Incumbent hospitals are protected against this anti-competitive legislation.
- RSA 151:4-a prohibits the institution of any “ambulatory surgical heart, emergency medical care heart, hospital, birthing heart, drop-in or walk-in care heart, dialysis heart, or particular well being care service” inside 15 miles of an present important entry hospital if the brand new facility “can have a fabric antagonistic impression” on the incumbent hospital. That’s, if it could damage the hospital’s enterprise, it’s prohibited from state licensure. A 15-mile radius would possibly sound small, but it surely equals 706.9 square miles.
- RSA 151:2-f mandates that each hospital, infirmary, “outpatient rehabilitation clinic, ambulatory surgical heart, hospice, emergency medical care heart, drop-in or walk-in care heart, dialysis heart, birthing heart, or different entity the place well being care related to sickness, harm, deformity, infirmity, or different bodily incapacity is supplied” settle for all types of cost. This legislation mandates that medical amenities settle for Medicare, Medicaid and personal insurance coverage — which signifies that it bans any facility designed to chop prices by accepting solely money cost. This inflates the price of providers and eliminates competitors.
As well as, RSA 151:2 VI (a.) imposes a moratorium on new beds for nursing and rehab amenities. It states that “there shall be no improve in licensed capability of, any nursing residence, expert nursing facility, intermediate care facility, or rehabilitation facility, together with rehabilitation hospitals and amenities providing complete rehabilitation providers.”
State legal guidelines be certain that it’s a lot simpler for incumbent hospitals and different medical amenities to develop than for brand new opponents to enter the New Hampshire market. The outcomes are precisely what one would anticipate.
Since 1980, New Hampshire’s inhabitants has elevated by 49.6%. However in that point, just one new acute care hospital, Parkland Medical Middle in Derry, has been constructed, Greg Moore, state director of People for Prosperity-NH has identified.
The present COVID-induced crunch on hospital capability has many causes. The media have reported, precisely, {that a} surge in sufferers mixed with a staffing scarcity has put extreme pressure on the system.
However that system entered the COVID-19 pandemic with a capability already artificially constrained by anti-competitive state legal guidelines. Going ahead, politicians who insist that New Hampshire wants to enhance its hospital mattress capability can begin by eradicating pointless boundaries that make it extraordinarily tough for brand new opponents to enter the New Hampshire market.
