Thesis
The association of uncompensated care with profitability in Washington state hospitals from 2000 to 2004
Washington State University
Master of Health Policy and Administration (MHPA), Washington State University
2006
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/505
Abstract
Although the issue of uncompensated care has been affluently discussed and documented, there has been little discussion of the association of the types of hospital based uncompensated care (charity care and bad debt) and profitability. The aim of this study is to examine the association of charity care and bad debt with hospitals' profitability. This study posits that uncompensated care is not significantly associated with profitability. As sub hypotheses, this study posits that (1) bad debt is not significantly associated with profitability and (2) charity care is not significantly associated with profitability. This study tests the hypotheses with 2004 data on 85 of the Washington acute care hospitals using two measures of profitability. To test the hypotheses, this study uses an ordinary least square (OLS) regression. Though the findings of this study revealed no evidence of a statistically significant association at the general level of uncompensated care with profitability for all hospital groups, this study revealed a statistically significant negative association of uncompensated care with profitability for non-teaching public hospitals. Meanwhile, this study found a positive relationship between charity care and profitability and a negative relationship between bad debt and profitability for all Washington hospitals. In addition, this study also found that ownership types and teaching status seem to alter those associations. Detailed results about the how ownership types and teaching status alter the association of types of uncompensated care with profitability are discussed. Policy implications from these findings are also presented.
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Details
- Title
- The association of uncompensated care with profitability in Washington state hospitals from 2000 to 2004
- Creators
- Jae Young. Choi
- Contributors
- Joseph S. Coyne (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Health Policy and Administration, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Health Policy and Administration (MHPA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525150101842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis