Access, quality, and costs of care at physician owned hospitals in the United States: observational study.

OBJECTIVE: To compare physician owned hospitals (POHs) with non-POHs on metrics around patient populations, quality of care, costs, and payments. DESIGN: Observational study. SETTING: Acute care hospitals in 95 hospital referral regions in the United States, 2010. PARTICIPANTS: 2186 US acute care hospitals (219 POHs and 1967 non-POHs). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Proportions of patients using Medicaid and those from ethnic and racial minority groups; hospital performance on patient experience metrics, care processes, risk adjusted 30 day mortality, and readmission rates; costs of care; care payments; and Medicare market share. RESULTS: The 219 POHs were more often small (<100 beds), for profit, and in urban areas. 120 of these POHs were general (non-specialty) hospitals. Compared with patients from non-POHs, those from POHs were younger (77.4 v 78.4 years, P<0.001), less likely to be admitted through an emergency department (23.2% v. 29.0%, P<0.001), equally likely to be black (5.1% v 5.5%, P=0.85) or to use Medicaid (14.9% v 15.4%, P=0.75), and had similar numbers of chronic diseases and predicted mortality scores. POHs and non-POHs performed similarly on patient experience scores, processes of care, risk adjusted 30 day mortality, 30 day readmission rates, costs, and payments for acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, and pneumonia. CONCLUSION: Although POHs may treat slightly healthier patients, they do not seem to systematically select more profitable or less disadvantaged patients or to provide lower value care.

Association between hospital conversions to for-profit status and clinical and economic outcomes.

IMPORTANCE: An increasing number of hospitals have converted to for-profit status, prompting concerns that these hospitals will focus on payer mix and profits, avoiding disadvantaged patients and paying less attention to quality of care. OBJECTIVE: To examine characteristics of US acute care hospitals associated with conversion to for-profit status and changes following conversion. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Retrospective cohort study conducted among 237 converting hospitals and 631 matched control hospitals. Participants were 1,843,764 Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries at converting hospitals and 4,828,138 at control hospitals. EXPOSURES: Conversion to for-profit status, 2003-2010. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Financial performance measures, quality process measures, mortality rates, Medicare volume, and patient population for the 2 years prior and the 2 years after conversion, excluding the conversion year, assessed using difference-in-difference models. RESULTS: Hospitals that converted to for-profit status were more often small or medium in size, located in the south, in an urban or suburban location, and were less often teaching institutions. Converting hospitals improved their total margins (ratio of net income to net revenue plus other income) more than controls (2.2% vs 0.4% improvement; difference in differences, 1.8% [ 95% CI, 0.5% to 3.1%]; P = .007). Converting hospitals and controls both improved their process quality metrics (6.0% vs 5.6%; difference in differences, 0.4% [95% CI, -1.1% to 2.0%]; P = .59). Mortality rates did not change at converting hospitals relative to controls for Medicare patients overall (increase of 0.1% vs 0.2%; difference in differences, -0.2% [95% CI, -0.5% to 0.2%], P = .42) or for dual-eligible or disabled patients. There was no change in converting hospitals relative to controls in annual Medicare volume (-111 vs -74 patients; difference in differences, -37 [95% CI, -224 to 150]; P = .70), Disproportionate Share Hospital Index (1.7% vs 0.4%; difference in differences, 1.3% [95% CI, -0.9% to 3.4%], P = .26), the proportion of patients with Medicaid (-0.2% vs 0.4%; difference in differences, -0.6% [95% CI, -2.0% to 0.8%]; P = .38) or the proportion of patients who were black (-0.4% vs -0.1%; difference in differences, -0.3% [95% CI, -1.9% to 1.3%]; P = .72) or Hispanic (0.1% vs -0.1%; difference in differences, 0.2% [95% CI, -0.3% to 0.7%]; P = .50). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Hospital conversion to for-profit status was associated with improvements in financial margins but not associated with differences in quality or mortality rates or with the proportion of poor or minority patients receiving care.

The use of failure mode and effect analysis in a radiation oncology setting: the Cancer Treatment Centers of America experience.

Delivering radiation therapy in an oncology setting is a high-risk process where system failures are more likely to occur because of increasing utilization, complexity, and sophistication of the equipment and related processes. Healthcare failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a method used to proactively detect risks to the patient in a particular healthcare process and correct potential errors before adverse events occur. FMEA is a systematic, multidisciplinary team-based approach to error prevention and enhancing patient safety. We describe our experience of using FMEA as a prospective risk-management technique in radiation oncology at a national network of oncology hospitals in the United States, capitalizing not only on the use of a team-based tool but also creating momentum across a network of collaborative facilities seeking to learn from and share best practices with each other. The major steps of our analysis across 4 sites and collectively were: choosing the process and subprocesses to be studied, assembling a multidisciplinary team at each site responsible for conducting the hazard analysis, and developing and implementing actions related to our findings. We identified 5 areas of performance improvement for which risk-reducing actions were successfully implemented across our enterprise.

Comparing public and private hospitals in China: evidence from Guangdong.

BACKGROUND: The literature comparing private not-for-profit, for-profit, and government providers mostly relies on empirical evidence from high-income and established market economies. Studies from developing and transitional economies remain scarce, especially regarding patient case-mix and quality of care in public and private hospitals, even though countries such as China have expanded a mixed-ownership approach to service delivery. The purpose of this study is to compare the operations and performance of public and private hospitals in Guangdong Province, China, focusing on differences in patient case-mix and quality of care. METHODS: We analyze survey data collected from 362 government-owned and private hospitals in Guangdong Province in 2005, combining mandatorily reported administrative data with a survey instrument designed for this study. We use univariate and multi-variate regression analyses to compare hospital characteristics and to identify factors associated with simple measures of structural quality and patient outcomes. RESULTS: Compared to private hospitals, government hospitals have a higher average value of total assets, more pieces of expensive medical equipment, more employees, and more physicians (controlling for hospital beds, urban location, insurance network, and university affiliation). Government and for-profit private hospitals do not statistically differ in total staffing, although for-profits have proportionally more support staff and fewer medical professionals. Mortality rates for non-government non-profit and for-profit hospitals do not statistically differ from those of government hospitals of similar size, accreditation level, and patient mix. CONCLUSIONS: In combination with other evidence on health service delivery in China, our results suggest that changes in ownership type alone are unlikely to dramatically improve or harm overall quality. System incentives need to be designed to reward desired hospital performance and protect vulnerable patients, regardless of hospital ownership type.

Specialty and full-service hospitals: a comparative cost analysis.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the costs of physician-owned cardiac, orthopedic, and surgical single specialty hospitals with those of full-service hospital competitors. DATA SOURCES: The primary data sources are the Medicare Cost Reports for 1998-2004 and hospital inpatient discharge data for three of the states where single specialty hospitals are most prevalent, Texas, California, and Arizona. The latter were obtained from the Texas Department of State Health Services, the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project. Additional data comes from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey Database. STUDY DESIGN: We identified all physician-owned cardiac, orthopedic, and surgical specialty hospitals in these three states as well as all full-service acute care hospitals serving the same market areas, defined using Dartmouth Hospital Referral Regions. We estimated a hospital cost function using stochastic frontier regression analysis, and generated hospital specific inefficiency measures. Application of t-tests of significance compared the inefficiency measures of specialty hospitals with those of full-service hospitals to make general comparisons between these classes of hospitals. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Results do not provide evidence that specialty hospitals are more efficient than the full-service hospitals with whom they compete. In particular, orthopedic and surgical specialty hospitals appear to have significantly higher levels of cost inefficiency. Cardiac hospitals, however, do not appear to be different from competitors in this respect. CONCLUSIONS: Policymakers should not embrace the assumption that physician-owned specialty hospitals produce patient care more efficiently than their full-service hospital competitors.

Hospital ownership and performance: evidence from stroke and cardiac treatment in Taiwan.

This paper compares program expenditure and treatment quality of stroke and cardiac patients between 1997 and 2000 across hospitals of various ownership types in Taiwan. Because Taiwan implemented national health insurance in 1995, the analysis is immune from problems arising from the complex setting of the U.S. health care market, such as segmentation of insurance status or multiple payers. Because patients may select admitted hospitals based on their observed and unobserved characteristics, we employ instrument variable (IV) estimation to account for the endogeneity of ownership status. Results of IV estimation find that patients admitted to non-profit hospitals receive better quality care, either measured by 1- or 12-month mortality rates. In terms of treatment expenditure, our results indicate no difference between non-profits and for-profits index admission expenditures, and at most 10% higher long-term expenditure for patients admitted to non-profits than to for-profits.

Hospital ownership and quality of care: what explains the different results in the literature?

This systematic review examines what factors explain the diversity of findings regarding hospital ownership and quality. We identified 31 observational studies written in English since 1990 that used multivariate analysis to examine quality of care at nonfederal general acute, short-stay US hospitals. We find that pooled estimates of ownership effects are sensitive to the subset of studies included and the extent of overlap among hospitals analyzed in the underlying studies. Ownership does appear to be systematically related to differences in quality among hospitals in several contexts. Whether studies find for-profit and government-controlled hospitals to have higher mortality rates or rates of adverse events than their nonprofit counterparts depends on data sources, time period, and region covered. Policymakers should be aware of the underlying reasons for conflicting evidence in this literature, and the strengths and weaknesses of meta-analytic synthesis. The 'true' effect of ownership appears to depend on institutional context, including differences across regions, markets, and over time.

The impact of for-profit hospital status on the care and outcomes of patients with non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction: results from the CRUSADE Initiative.

OBJECTIVES: We sought to determine whether for-profit status influenced hospitals' care or outcomes among non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) patients. BACKGROUND: While for-profit hospitals potentially have financial incentives to selectively care for younger, healthier patients, perform highly reimbursed procedures, reduce costs by limiting access to expensive medications, and encourage shorter in-patient length of stay, there are limited data available to investigate these issues objectively. METHODS: Using data from the CRUSADE (Can Rapid risk stratification of Unstable angina patients Suppress ADverse outcomes with Early implementation of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines) Initiative, we investigated whether for-profit status influenced hospitals' patient case mix, care, or outcomes among 145,357 patients with NSTEMI treated between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2005, at 532 U.S. hospitals. Impact of for-profit status on care and outcomes was analyzed overall and after adjustment for clinical and facility factors using regression modeling. RESULTS: Patients (n = 11,658) treated at 58 for-profit hospitals were of similar age and gender, but were more likely to be nonwhite (black, Asian, Hispanic, and other) and have health maintenance organization/private insurance, diabetes mellitus, congestive heart failure, hypertension, and renal insufficiency compared with 133,699 patients treated at 474 nonprofit hospitals. For-profit hospitals were less likely to use discharge beta-blockers, but all other treatments were similar including the use of interventional procedures (cardiac catheterization and revascularization procedures) compared with nonprofit centers. In-hospital length of stay and mortality were also similar by hospital type. CONCLUSIONS: We found no evidence that for-profit hospitals selectively treat less sick patients, provide less evidence-based care, limit in-hospital stays, or have patients with worse acute outcomes than nonprofit centers.

Strategic management and performance differences: nonprofit versus for-profit health organizations.

Despite mixed and contradictory findings, for-profits (FPs) and nonprofits (NPs) are assumed to be similar health services organizations (HSOs). In this study, a fifteen-item scale assessing HSOs' strategic management capacity was developed and tested using fifty-seven FP and twenty NP organizations. Then, using item response theory, the items were hierarchically profiled to produce two strategic profile models, a general and an FP anchored model. We find that deviation from the general profile, but not capability attainment level, is related to two of three financial measures. We conclude that studying FPs and NPs together is appropriate.

Changes in hospital quality after conversion in ownership status.

This paper examines the effects of conversions between For-Profit and Not-For-Profit forms on quality of medical care in California hospitals. The sample includes elderly patients treated in California's private hospitals from 1990 to 1998 for Acute Myocardial Infarction and Congestive Heart Failure. The results suggest that converted hospitals have experienced quality changes before conversion and that ignoring these changes may bias the estimates of conversion effects. Both conversions are found to have some adverse consequences: Hospitals that converted to FP form show an increase in AMI mortality rates, while those converted to NFP status indicate an increase in CHF mortality outcomes.