A couple of news items illustrated new competition the Cone Health system will be facing here in Greensboro.
The Triad Business Journal has a story reporting that Atrium/ Baptist purchased a piece of land off Horsepen Creek Rd. where it will locate its outpatient surgical center.
Almost simultaneously, the News and Record reported that the same entity is pursuing regulatory approval for a 36-bed community hospital with an emergency department at the same location.
Another article in the Triad Business Journal discusses funding that various academic medical centers receive from the NIH— Tony Fauci’s former agency. Both Duke and UNC received in excess of $500 million last year, whereas Wake Forest Baptist received $132 million. Those are huge chunks of cash.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, academic medical centers and hospital systems were compromised and followed the party line from the federal government in part because of the enormous amount of research monies that were at stake. But they were also thinking about those Medicare/ Medicaid dollars.
It is good that Cone will perhaps have more competition for emergency services and inpatient hospitalizations here in Greensboro.
That is refreshing news. Good luck to Atrium Health.
On the one hand, Fred, it is refreshing news because there will be competition.
But none of the hospital systems are clean. None of them are good actors, and Atrium has its own set of issues. They all handled Covid-related issues miserably. The Covid pandemic revealed for all to see that they were all willing to do the wrong thing for money.
The corruption is systemic. They all seek power, and control over markets, and lots of money; and many of these do so under the facade of being a non-profit.