Hospitals Can’t Challenge Agency Decision Allowing Competitor’s Expansion

Congress blocked federal courts from reviewing the HHS’s approval process allowing physician-owned hospitals to expand operations, a federal appeals court ruled Nov. 21.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling in favor of the Department of Health and Human Services over three Texas hospitals seeking to block expansion of a competing hospital. The plaintiff hospitals said Doctors Hospital at Renaissance (DHR) shouldn’t have been granted an exception to the general prohibition against physician-owned hospital expansion after March 2010, which is allowed only in limited circumstances under a provision of the ...