Re: Flying patients to other hospitals

["John Linko" <fllw_fan@hotmail.com>]

Larry, there are lots of flight programs out there whose primary mission is 
to funnel patients back to the hospital(s) that support them, and who have 
been designed to compete with other programs and hospitals who offer the 
same services. I have seen programs who have crossed moral and ethical 
boundaries in pursuit of that goal as well.

The bottom line in helping to keep the status quo intact is to make sure 
that physician referral patterns remain intact. The new startup cath lab 
will likely start marketing itself aggressively to other hospitals and 
physicians in the area. The cardiology staff at your facility needs to make 
sure that the lines of communication are open with those in outlying 
facilities that refer patients to your hospital.

As far as the "legality" of your facility's possible directive to fly 
patients only to your facility, try flying someone to your facility who has 
been referred elsewhere, or who has chosen to go elsewhere, and see what 
happens. In my experience, flying patients to their facility of choice is 
part of the cost of doing business. The only restriction that my former 
flight program imposed on patient destination was that trauma patients could 
only be transported to state-accredited trauma centers.
I think that the proposed "policy" will be short-lived if implemented.

There are several states that regulate the level of services that hospitals 
provide, to avoid excessive duplication of services in an effort to control 
the overall cost of health care. If your state is one of these, then they 
have already identified the need for this other cath lab to exist. If they 
are able to grab a hold of some market share, and physicians refer acutely 
ill patients to them, then I see little choice for your program but to honor 
the wishes of those physicians and patients as to their facility of choice. 
In this scenario you fill the role of any other transporting ambulance, as 
opposed to an arm of your base hospital, and in the larger scheme of things 
that's the way it should be.

Best of luck.

John Linko
Grand Junction, CO


>From: LJPeterman@aol.com
>Reply-To: flightmed@flightweb.com
>To: flightmed@flightweb.com
>Subject: Flying patients to other hospitals
>Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 01:40:01 EDT
>
>Our hospital based program is considering making us fly all of our patients
>back to our hospital, with very few exceptions.  This would end a 20 year
>history of taking patients to whichever appropriate facility they or their
>sending physician requested.  There is only one other hospital in our town,
>and they have recently opened a cardiac   cath lab which is direct
>competition to our hospital's cardiac program.
>I am interested in hearing from anyone who has gone through a similar
>situation.  I have questions as to the legality of such a decision.  Any
>thoughts?
>
>Larry, RN, EMT-P
>
>_______________________________________________
>Flightmed mailing list


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