Columbia defends partnerships with physicians

Art Nadler

Thursday, May 8, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Columbia Sunrise Hospital has no plans to discontinue partnerships with physicians who invest in its three ambulatory surgical centers around Southern Nevada.

"It's not something that's unlawful," said A. Allan Stipe, president of the Columbia Southwest Division in Nevada. "What we see are new levels of interests that are all customer friendly, where the physicians are acting as owners."

According to a recent New York Times article, the federal agency that operates Medicare is presently examining partnerships in several cities for possible violations of conflict-of-interest laws. It's alleged that physicians routinely send patients to facilities where they have a financial incentive.

Some physicians in Florida and Texas who joined limited partnerships have said they were pressured by hospital administrators to steer business to Columbia surgical centers and home-care services. Other physicians have refused to invest because they viewed such agreements as conflicts of interest.

"It's different in other corporate markets," Stipe said. "We never told physicians to only deal with Columbia here."

Columbia Sunrise operates three surgical centers in Southern Nevada at: 870 S. Rancho Drive, 2401 Paseo del Prado and 2565 Flamingo Road. All three, Stipe said, offer limited partnerships to physicians.

In one deal at the Flamingo Road surgical center, 78 limited partnerships were offered to physicians for a total investment of $652,275. This would break down to more than $8,000 per unit, if a doctor wanted to buy into the offering.

Stipe wouldn't say how many units were sold in the three surgical centers, or reveal the number of physicians involved because that falls under proprietary information.

"If you look across the country, this (partnerships) is very much a growth industry," Stipe said. "Procedures done in out-patient centers are growing. Having physicians participate in the operation of these centers is important."

Stipe said a physician would probably send a patient to a surgical center where he has a partnership because he knows how that facility operates. Generating business for himself would not be an issue, he said.

But the SUN has learned that some physicians in Las Vegas have turned down offers to join partnerships because they viewed them as financial conflicts of interest.

Recently, the New York Times analyzed referral patterns of 62 physicians in the Miami area. It found that doctors who joined partnerships tended to refer more patients to Columbia hospitals than its competitors.