Other hospitals in the community and doctors excluded from the arrangement, Health Care Financing Administration Grace Hospital, a non-profit hospital in Center City seeks to create a subsidiary organization, a surgicenter to provide outpatient surgical services to insured individuals.
Grace believes that an independent organization is desirable for several reasons.
It would enable them to provide a more attractive facility, without generating the animosity that might result if staff and patients could observe the difference between a spanking new service and the generally dilapidated conditions that exist in the main hospital. In addition, while the hospital seeks to work with most of the surgeons who presently have admitting privileges at the hospital, two of the current members of the surgical staff are trouble makers and would not be included in the new venture. While creation of the surgicenter may reduce the amount of inpatient surgery done at Grace, the hospital hopes that close affiliation with this attractive new Center will increase the amount of inpatient surgery and, eventually, increase its volume. Finally, and most important, by creating a new organization that only takes patients by appointment and private referral, the hospital seeks to avoid pressure to make its services available to Medicaid and uninsured patients seeking care through the emergency room. Grace is the largest of six hospitals in Centcr City and now provides thirty percent of the surgical services delivered there.