The Columbia/HCA hospital sales: an opportunity to re-focus on community benefits.

Columbia/HCA, currently the target of federal fraud investigations that have led to indictments of four top executives, announced plans in late 1997 to sell 115 hospital facilities. In a period of frenetic mergers, this sale will most affect communities in which Columbia has put multiple facilities on the auction block, yet this round of restructuring also foreshadows an increasingly consolidated--and profit-driven--industry. States of Health explores how community intervention in these sales may offer a chance to see that health needs are not further sacrificed to industry profits.