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California’S Vanishing Community Hospital: An Endangered Institution, Craig B. Garner

Craig B. Garner

Across the nation, America’s community hospitals are under siege. Once considered indispensable to our health care system, the twenty-first century finds the local hospital fighting an uphill battle against a convergence of factors that favors the sharing of resources by multiple facilities. Rising health care expenses, challenging regulatory hurdles, and a reimbursement structure in the midst of transition all bear some responsibility for the obstacles faced by today’s community hospital. Nowhere is this phenomenon more pronounced than in California, where regular hospital closings amid an ever-growing population stand as incentive for remaining hospitals to team up (or remain teamed up) …