TY  - JOUR
AU  - Shen,Yu-Chu
AU  - Eggleston,Karen
AU  - Lau,Joseph
AU  - Schmid,Christopher
TI  - Hospital Ownership and Financial Performance: A Quantitative Research Review
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11662
PY  - 2005
Y2  - October 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11662
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11662.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Yu-Chu Shen
Graduate School of Business and Public Policy
Naval Postgraduate School
555 Dyer Road
Monterey, CA 93943
Tel: 831/656-2951
E-Mail: yshen@nps.edu

Karen Eggleston
Stanford University
Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
  
E-Mail: karene@stanford.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2005-10-03
AB  - We apply meta-analytic methods to conduct a quantitative review of the empirical literature since 1990 comparing financial performance of US for-profit, not-for-profit, and government-owned general acute hospitals. We find that the diverse results in the hospital ownership literature can be explained largely by differences in authors' underlying theoretical frameworks, assumptions about the functional form of the dependent variables, and model specifications. Weaker methods and functional forms tend to predict larger differences in financial performance between not-for-profits and for-profits. The combined estimates across studies suggest little difference in cost among all three types of hospital ownership, and that for-profit hospitals generate more revenue and greater profits than not-for-profit hospitals, although the difference is only of modest economic significance. There is little difference in revenue or profits between government and not-for-profit hospitals.
ER  -