Tennessee Hospital Monopoly Continues to Fail Consumers
By Consumers for Quality Care, on December 17, 2024
The country’s largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly is facing continued calls for reform as consumers increasingly grow wary and fearful about the quality of care being administered, according to KFF Health News.
Ballad Health is a large 20-hospital system serving over 1 million residents in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia. The system was established six years ago, when Tennessee and Virginia lawmakers agreed to waive anti-monopoly laws. In exchange for this waiver, Ballad agreed to uphold certain levels of quality care, but in the years since, Ballad has not met these goals, failing consumers who have few options for where they receive medical care. For residents across this 29-county region of Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, the hospitals in Ballad’s network are the only option for emergency care in the Tri-Cities area.
Though the hospital is graded by the Tennessee Department of Health each year, only a fraction of Ballad’s final score depends on performance standards, such as surgery complications, emergency room speed, and patient satisfaction. This has allowed Ballad to receive an “A” grade each year despite a history of failing to meet quality of care standards. Larry Fitzgerald, a retired Tennessee consultant who was left with no choice but to give Ballad high marks when he was working, said the merger has “probably not” benefitted consumers.
Emergency department wait times and hospital admission times have become a major concern for Ballad. The time that patients spend in the emergency department before admission has sharply increased year after year, leading to a median wait time of eleven hours, a number that has increased threefold since the Ballad Health monopoly was established.
Regulators have taken notice, with the Federal Trade Commission citing Ballad as a prime example of a failing merger in the health care system.
CQC applauds efforts to improve the quality of care for consumers. Decreased competition hurts consumers, often leading to fewer options for care and higher out-of-pocket costs. CQC urges regulators and lawmakers to promote more competition and to discourage mergers and other business practices that leave consumers worse off.
