Impact of US state government regulation on patient access to elective surgical care

Purpose. Rising health care costs in the United States have led to government regulation of services via a Certificate of Need (CON) law in many states. Such regulation may de-crease access to elective surgical procedures. This study describes the impact of CON laws on elective surgical care. Methods. This retrospective cohort trial used data from the Health Care Utilization Project, a publicly available, inpa-tient database. Rates of six elective procedures were com-pared between 21 CON states and 5 non-CON states (2004-2005). Further, facility type (non-profit versus for-profit), facility teaching status, and median charges were also compared as a function of CON status. Statistical analysis was performed by Student’s t-tests (=0.05). Results. CON laws did not affect procedure rates (P