Physician Led and Rural Access to Quality Care Act

Key Points

• The bill rewrites Medicare's physician self-referral law to create a new category of 'covered rural hospital' that can qualify for physician ownership even though general self-referral rules normally restrict this.
• It ends a nationwide ban, in place since 2010, that stopped existing physician-owned hospitals from expanding their number of beds, operating rooms, or procedure rooms.
• The overall purpose of the bill is to change Medicare law specifically around physician self-referral exemptions tied to physician-owned hospitals.
• The bill's nine Republican sponsors are largely from states with significant rural populations, reflecting the stated goal of boosting hospital access in rural communities.