ATLANTA — The loss of Atlanta Medical Center follows a nationwide trend in hospital closings – especially in rural areas, but also in big cities.
An analyst who researches the topic called the health care economy the "survival of the fattest."
Emory Healthcare is rooted in a university hospital in northeast Atlanta. The Emory health care system has clinics all over -- and is well placed in Atlanta’s wealthy suburbs. As a teaching hospital, it not only draws patients – but it also draws doctors, said Alan Sager of Boston University.
Younger doctors "have been attracted to major teaching hospitals that are more prestigious and that have higher payer mixes, or they have more privately insured patients who pay doctors higher prices," Sager said.
Sager said the health care market has collapsed the number of hospitals in big cities across America, from Boston to Los Angeles.
Over the last 12 years, he’s documented hospital closings in almost every major city in the United States. He said they tend to serve lower income patients who can’t sustain a hospital’s bottom line – as Atlanta Medical Center has done.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said he expects to meet with hospital officials next week.
"Yeah, if we don’t get this rectified, lives could be at stake because so many people utilize those facilities and for care," Dickens said.
Emory also helps run Grady Memorial Hospital and Emory at Crawford Long, two downtown hospitals within eyeshot of Atlanta Medical Center.
Sager said size matters in health care.
"Sometimes this is called survival of the fattest," he said. Their size gives larger health care systems more leverage to negotiate better deals with insurance companies – drawing even more patients.
"The well-insured patients from higher income suburbs will come into cities to the major teaching hospitals, but not to the lower reputation ones," Sager said.
Atlanta Medical Center also lacks the huge pool of medical students that a place like Emory has –who can be used to fill staffing gaps and who may naturally be inclined to stay within the system that got them their medical degrees.