Healthcare Reform White Paper

We are a for-profit organization but we provide care to a higher percentage of governmental and uninsured patients than most of the charitable healthcare organizations in southwest Missouri—patients typically served by nonprofit or tax-supported providers. We have searched for other similarly organized systems still functioning today and we have found none. For-profit physician-owned hospitals operating as safety-net providers for governmental and uninsured patients simply do not exist. Our organization is unique in many ways but its uniqueness provides the opportunity to test (and possibly rebut) some of the assumptions often made about this country’s healthcare system and the path reform should take. In that sense, Ozarks Community Hospital could be considered a demonstration project for healthcare reform. We are providing this “white paper” presenting our perspective on healthcare reform to contribute to the national debate.

This OCH White Paper on Healthcare Reform is presented in three main parts—our rationale for reform now, our unique perspective on healthcare and our reform recommendations. If the reader has no particular interest in our rationale for reform or our story but is primarily interested in the reform proposal itself, the final section can stand on its own. With the anticipation of reaching a general audience, certain healthcare industry concepts are explained in a manner that will no doubt irritate readers inside the industry. We placed some inside a text box to make them easier to skip!