Paying more and getting less: As hospital chains grow, local services shrink

When most hospitals close, it’s plain to see. Equipment and fixtures are hauled out and carted away. Doctors and nurses leave and buildings are shuttered, maybe demolished.

But another fate befalling U.S. hospitals is almost invisible. Across the country, conglomerates that control an increasing share of the market are changing their business models, consolidating services in one regional “hub” hospital and cutting them from others.

In recent years, hospitals across the country have seen their entire inpatient departments closed — no patients staying the night, no nursery, no place for the sickest of the sick to recover. These facilities become, in essence, outpatient clinics.

Hospital executives see these cuts as sound business decisions, and say they are the inevitable consequence of changes in how people are using medical services. But to patients and local leaders who joined forces with these larger health networks just years ago, they feel more like broken promises: Not only are they losing convenient access to care, their local hospitals are also getting drained of revenue and jobs that sustain their communities.

“It’s not even just betrayal. It’s disgust, frankly,” said Mariah Lynne, a resident of Albert Lea, Minn., where Mayo Clinic is removing most inpatient care and the birthing unit from one of its hospitals. “Never would I have expected a brand of this caliber to be so callous.”

In 2015, the most recent year of data, these service reductions accounted for nearly half of the around the country, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. (By MedPac’s definition, the loss of inpatient wards is equivalent to closure.) These data do not capture