Articles

Access to healthcare is a nationwide problem. Lack of access might be attributed to too few facilities, too few providers, or unaffordable prices. States are finally waking up and acknowledging that decades-old policies may be exacerbating these problems. One of these bad policies is known as certificate of need (CON) laws. CON laws function lik ...

Emergency rooms across the country are overcrowded, forcing patients suffering from severe illnesses to wait hours for treatment. Worse, when there are sudden increases in illness—say from an influenza outbreak—hospitals are unable to address the problem. That is because many state governments have adopted Certificate of Need (CON) laws that preven ...

As a nurse in rural Colorado after World War II, Loretta Ford described herself as a lone ranger. "Whatever went on in health, I was called," she said. "I took care of it." Ms. Ford, who died in January at the age of 104, co-founded America's first nurse practitioner program. She believed that nurses were more than doctors' helpers: They were de ...

In a recent column, state Delegate Scot Heckert argues that West Virginia's Certificate of Need (CON) program is needed to protect health care services in rural communities. Unfortunately, his defense ignores clear evidence that these outdated laws reduce access to care and increase patient costs. Health care CON laws make it difficult or imposs ...

Health care shortages are a nationwide problem, but they are particularly concerning in Oregon – the state with the second fewest hospital beds and second fewest rehabilitation beds per capita. This problem didn't pop up overnight. Instead, Oregon's "certificate of need" laws have been restricting growth for decades, leaving Oregonians without acce ...