HCA Healthcare: US Hospital Operations

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It makes sense, and this is roughly in line with what we've seen so far. To switch gears a bit, you've probably heard about the allegations against HCA, over the last 10 to 15 years and then, more recently, from the workers’ union. We want to touch upon a few points there and the first thing that jumped in our is that, allegedly, emergency department physicians within HCA get benchmarked to peers. We're wondering if this is something that is actually quite common within the space? If so, is there a difference in how HCA does it?

Benchmarking is quite normal across the healthcare industry. This is how you motivate people to do whatever it is that you're expecting them to do. But benchmarking against their peers, it's hard in an emergency room, I'm just saying as an industry standard, because you cannot expect every physician to be the same. 'Door to Doc' is one of those benchmarks that they often look at; how fast do you see a patient when they come into the emergency room? If you are honest about it, then it does take a little bit longer to see the patient, or if you have the pressure that you have to achieve those single digit metrics, then people tend to game the system. They will just click on, yes, I saw the patient, if they just walked by and said, 'hello', instead of actually evaluating the patient. I'm still seeing the patient, I laid eyes on them, they're breathing. But I will wait and evaluate them in just a little bit when I'm done with this other task. It does promote a level of pressure, and then depending on the physician’s values and beliefs, are they are they going to succumb to that? Or are they going to hold true to the personal ask?

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