 | Selling Teaching Hospitals and Practice Plans Subjects: Practice Management; Hospital Restructuring; Financial Management; Academic Medical Centers; Hospitals; Academic medical centers; Teaching hospitals; Teaching hospitals; Why would a university renowned for its school of medicine ever sell its teaching hospital? In his newest book, Dr. John A. Kastor presents an insider's view of why university medical centers decide to sell teaching hospitals, why the decision might be a good one, and how such transitions are received by the faculty and administration. Kastor tells the story of two universities that, under financial duress for more than a decade, chose to sell their teaching hospitals. George Washington University sold to a national, for-profit corporation, Universal Health Services, Inc., and Georgetown University sold to a not-for-profit, local company, MedStar Health. Through interviews with key players involved in and affected by these decisions, Kastor examines the advantages and disadvantages of selling and describes the problems that can afflict medical schools that separate from their faculty practice plans. For the current leaders of medical schools facing similar financial challenges, Kastor analyzes how much it costs to teach clinical medicine and offers valuable advice on how to reduce expenses and increase surpluses. John A. Kastor, M.D. , a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is the former chief of the Cardiovascular Division at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and former chair of the Department of Medicine at Maryland. He is the author of Arrhythmias; Mergers of Teaching Hospitals in Boston, New York, and Northern California; Governance of Teaching Hospitals: Turmoil at Penn and Hopkins; and Specialty Care in the Era of Managed Care: Cleveland Clinic versus University Hospitals of Cleveland , the last two published by Johns Hopkins. |
