YourVoice.Now Summary
Your MoneyCorporate BenefitsTransparency & AccountabilityDoctors could own hospitals they send Medicare patients to — and remote rural areas could get new ones.
Your Money
Medicare rules now stop doctors from sending patients to a hospital they own, apart from narrow exceptions. This would open one for rural hospitals far from any other hospital. The cutoff is a 35-mile drive, or 15 miles in mountains or where only secondary roads run.
Corporate Benefits
These hospitals are now held to the beds and operating rooms they were licensed for in 2010. That cap would stop applying the day the law took effect, for every doctor-owned hospital, not just rural ones.
Transparency & Accountability
Doctor-owned hospitals must now tell patients that a referring doctor holds a stake, early enough for the patient to pick somewhere else. The rural hospitals this covers would not have to.
These hospitals must now tell you before you are admitted if no doctor will be on site the whole time, and have you sign that you understand. That step would not apply to the rural hospitals this covers.
Doctor-owned hospitals now send Medicare a yearly list of who owns them and how big each stake is. The rural hospitals this covers would stop filing it.
More about this bill
Doctors could own a hospital in a remote rural area and still send their Medicare patients there. Today that is blocked unless the hospital already had doctor owners back in 2010. The block would lift for rural hospitals more than a 35-mile drive from the nearest hospital. In mountains, or where only secondary roads run, 15 miles would be enough. Doctor-owned hospitals everywhere could also grow again. A rule now holds them to the beds and operating rooms they had in 2010, and that cap would end. The rural hospitals this covers would skip three other requirements. They would not file a yearly ownership list with Medicare. They would not have to tell patients that a treating doctor owns part of the hospital. They would not have to say before admission that no doctor may be on site at all hours.
Congressional Summary
Physician Led and Rural Access to Quality Care ActThis bill expands flexibilities for physicians and physician-owned hospitals under the Stark law (i.e., the Physician Self-Referral Law). The Stark law generally prohibits physicians from referring patients to receive services that are payable under Medicare or Medicaid from entities in which the physician or an immediate family member has a financial relationship. The bill allows physicians or their immediate family members to have financial interests in rural hospitals that are located more than 35 miles (or 15 miles in certain mountainous areas or areas with only secondary roads) from a hospital or critical access hospital.The Stark law also generally prohibits physician-owned hospitals from expanding the number of operating rooms, procedure rooms, or beds beyond the number in existence as of March 23, 2010, in order to be excepted under the Stark law. The bill removes this restriction.
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- Senate
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Introduced in Senate
- Action Date
- 2025-04-09
- Date Added
- 2026-09-01
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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