Recent changes in Missouri's oversight process for hospital expansions have been a long time coming, and they are welcome.

Years ago when hospital competition was a far different game, when hospitals sought to add many new services and when managed health care was still in its infancy, there probably was a genuine need for some review of what was being made available to the consuming public.

But now hospitals rarely seek to add new services or costly high-tech equipment unless they already have calculated the payback and the benefits. As a result, the state's Health Facilities Review Committee had become a government bureaucracy with very little actual control over health-care development.

The new legislation increases the spending limits for hospitals before they need to be reviewed. In effect, the limits pretty much give a green light to decisions made at the local level by hospital administrations and their boards. This is far preferable than the sometimes unclear and inconsistent direction hospitals were getting from the committee.