CONTEXT Between 1998 and 2008, the number of hospital-based emergency departments (EDs) in the United States declined, while the number of ED visits increased, particularly visits by patients who were publicly insured and uninsured. Little is known about the hospital, community, and market factors associated with ED closures. Federal law requiring EDs to treat all in need regardless of a patien...

BACKGROUND The ownership, location, and teaching status of hospitals affect their missions, policies, finances, and operations. OBJECTIVE This study assesses the relationship of hospital ownership, location, and teaching status with charges and length of stay for children with asthma, the most common reason for pediatric admission after birth. METHODS All 28 545 complete records of patients...

Do nonprofit hospitals sell at a discount compared to for-profit hospitals? This question stems from public concerns about the underpricing of nonprofits, and raises important questions about the nature of nonprofit firms, their objectives, and their managerial efficiency. We address this question using a database of hospital sales prices and find that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, nonpro...

This article describes the emerging trend of using metrics in rural hospitals to achieve world-class performance. This trend is a response to the fact that rural hospitals have small patient volumes yet must maintain a profit margin in order to fulfill their mission to the community. The conceptual idea for this article is based largely on Robert Kaplan and David Norton's Balanced Scorecard art...

BACKGROUND A global budgeting system helps control the growth of healthcare spending by setting expenditure ceilings. However, the hospital global budget implemented in Taiwan in 2002 included a special provision: drug expenditures are reimbursed at face value, while other expenditures are subject to discounting. That gives hospitals, particularly those that are for-profit, an incentive to incr...

BACKGROUND Antitrust authorities treat price as a proxy for hospital quality since health care quality is difficult to observe. As the ability to measure quality improved, more research became necessary to investigate the relationship between hospital market power and patient outcomes. This paper examines the impact of hospital competition on the quality of care as measured by the risk-adjusted...

In 1989 the Catholic Health Association, in conjunction with the University of Iowa Center for Health Services Research, surveyed chief executive officers (CEOs) of rural hospitals regarding their hospital's viability and strategic behaviors and orientations. An extensive questionnaire was sent to the CEOs of all Catholic, all other religious not-for-profit, and all investor-owned rural hospita...

National university hospitals are not different from private hospitals as the public role played by the former is not clearly defined in Korea. They have to compete with other general hospitals in the same region [1]. The introduction of the nationwide Korea Express Train has increased accessibility to medical institutions in the metropolitan area since 2003. This has resulted in an increased n...