Small Dayton hospital could go out of business

A physician-owned hospital in Dayton — which has been locked in an anti-trust lawsuit for years against Premier Health hospitals — might now have to close not because of competition but because of a change in the way the federal government defines what’s a “hospital.”

Federal regulators no longer consider Medical Center Elizabeth Place to be a hospital as of Jan. 18 so it can no longer bill Medicare and Medicaid.

“It had nothing to do with clinical quality. It had nothing to do with the care that we render or the community need for that matter,” Elizabeth Place CEO Beth Johnson said at a Monday afternoon press conference. “It was strictly based off of CMS’s (U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) interpretation of what constitutes a hospital.”

The center lost its hospital status because the 12-bed facility sometimes had too low of a volume of patients admitted to count as a hospital under federal standards.

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