> New hospitals are being built with fewer beds than the ones they are replacing. Guess why? Because new hospitals need a Certificate of Need to be approved f

> New hospitals are being built with fewer beds than the ones they are replacing. Guess why? Because new hospitals need a Certificate of Need to be approved for construction. What's that? It's a process by which -other hospitals in the area- get to say whether a new facility should be built. In many cases, this means a fine tuning of things to make sure you maintain available beds across all hospitals just short of the actual need (because if your facility is going to absorb the need, and leave others with empty beds, then you ain't getting your certificate). This process was lobbied for by the hospitals themselves.