Certificate of Need laws in many US States were supposedly enacted to control medical care costs by blocking every little hospital and clinic from being able to buy all the equipment they wanted.
What CoN laws actually do is ensure scarcity of advanced capabilities like CAT, MRI, PET and other scanning machines, Neonatal Intensive Care Units or even childbirth specialization. They're being used to drive all patients needing those to the bigger hospitals - which often have their owners or representatives on the CoN boards to block petitions from rural and small town hospitals to buy a CAT scan machine or open their own NICU.
Fortunately I live in Idaho, without CoN laws. This small town of Weiser got the very first 80 centimeter bore MRI machine in the United States a few years ago. Weiser Memorial has also been able to keep up with CAT technology, though other hospitals have newer machines.
With CoN laws this hospital wouldn't be allowed to have either machine.
Certificate of Need laws in many US States were supposedly enacted to control medical care costs by blocking every little hospital and clinic from being able to buy all the equipment they wanted.
What CoN laws actually do is ensure scarcity of advanced capabilities like CAT, MRI, PET and other scanning machines, Neonatal Intensive Care Units or even childbirth specialization. They're being used to drive all patients needing those to the bigger hospitals - which often have their owners or representatives on the CoN boards to block petitions from rural and small town hospitals to buy a CAT scan machine or open their own NICU.
Fortunately I live in Idaho, without CoN laws. This small town of Weiser got the very first 80 centimeter bore MRI machine in the United States a few years ago. Weiser Memorial has also been able to keep up with CAT technology, though other hospitals have newer machines.
With CoN laws this hospital wouldn't be allowed to have either machine.