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Performance evaluations of for‐profit and nonprofit U.S. hospitals since 1980
Author(s) -
Rosenau Pauline Vaillancourt
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
nonprofit management and leadership
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.844
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1542-7854
pISSN - 1048-6682
DOI - 10.1002/nml.7
Subject(s) - for profit , nonprofit organization , health care , not for profit , profit (economics) , uncompensated care , business , performance measurement , marketing , psychology , public relations , actuarial science , economics , accounting , political science , finance , microeconomics , economic growth , medicaid
This synthesis of studies examines whether the published literature shows an evidence‐based consensuson performance differences between private for‐profit and nonprofit hospitals in the United States since1980. The author systematically and comprehensively surveyed peer‐reviewed publications to clarify thisquestion. The author's second objective was to learn what proportion of all research assessingfor‐profit and nonprofit health care providers is devoted to hospitals compared to all other providers.The third goal was to discover how any trends in observed performance differences among hospitals compare withtrends among other provider types. Computerized bibliographic searches of all relevant databases yielded seventy‐five studies(ninety‐three assessments) that compared the performance of for‐profit and nonprofithospitals on four performance criteria: access, quality, cost or efficiency, and amount of charity care. Theauthor coded findings on performance in one of three ways: for‐profit superiority, nonprofitsuperiority, or inconclusive. Most studies (60 percent) reported that nonprofit hospitals have betterrelative performance than for‐profit hospitals, clear evidence of their organizational effectiveness.Thirty‐one percent were inconclusive, and 8 percent reported that for‐profits were better.