Hospital chain HCA defends ER practices in second week of scrutiny

HCA Holdings, the hospital operator being investigated for performing unnecessary heart procedures and billing Medicare for it, has issued a second statement in anticipation of a critical news story by the New York Times that examines the company's emergency room procedures. The notice, posted on the HCA website, says the newspaper has raised questions about the adoption of a set of guidelines for evaluating and managing patients at emergency rooms. HCA seems to be pre-emptively positioning itself amid such statistics when it claims that about half of its 163 hospitals have adopted systems to determine when patients seen at its ERs actually need emergency care.