Tennessee Agency Gives Full Credit to Hospital Monopoly Despite Poor Performance

Tennessee Agency Gives State’s Largest Hospital Monopoly Full Credit Despite Poor Performance

In a shocking revelation, the Tennessee Department of Health has been awarding full credit to Ballad Health, the nation’s largest state-sanctioned hospital monopoly, on dozens of quality-of-care measurements, regardless of how its hospitals actually perform. Ballad Health, a 20-hospital system in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, has consistently received A grades and an annual stamp of approval from the state health department, despite falling short of performance targets.

According to health department documents, only 5% of Ballad’s final score is based on actual quality of care, with no penalty for failing to meet the state’s goals in about 50 areas, including surgery complications, emergency room speed, and patient satisfaction. This has raised concerns among residents like Ron Allgood, who experienced a heart attack in a Ballad ER after waiting for three hours with chest pains. Allgood expressed frustration, stating, “It seems that nobody listens to the patients.”

The creation of Ballad Health six years ago, following a merger approved by Tennessee and Virginia lawmakers, has resulted in the company becoming the sole option for hospital care for over 1.1 million residents in a 29-county region. Critics have accused Ballad of diminishing the quality of care in the hospitals they have relied on for years, with protesters rallying outside Ballad facilities and long-time residents like Allgood lamenting the decline in services.

Despite Ballad’s failure to meet baseline values on 75% or more of all quality measures in recent years, the Tennessee health department has consistently given the company high scores and grades. Larry Fitzgerald, a former monitor of Ballad for the Tennessee government, criticized the state’s scoring rubric, likening it to giving a student free points on a test for any answer provided.

Calls for reform of the scoring system have been met with silence from Ballad Health, while the Tennessee Department of Health and the Attorney General’s Office have deflected questions on the matter. The Virginia Department of Health, responsible for overseeing Ballad’s operations in the state, has also fallen behind in its assessments.

The revelation of Ballad’s poor performance despite receiving high grades has raised concerns about the impact of hospital monopolies on patient care and outcomes. With the Federal Trade Commission warning of increased prices and decreased quality of care in such scenarios, the need for stricter regulation and accountability in the healthcare industry has never been more apparent.

As residents continue to voice their concerns and demand better care, the future of Ballad Health and the state’s oversight of the hospital monopoly remain uncertain. Stay tuned for further developments on this evolving story.

By Brett Kelman | May 29, 2024

Midwest correspondent Samantha Liss contributed to this report.