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What's New? | Faculty in the News |  News Archive | News Home
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Does Hospital Ownership Matter in Patient Care? Mapping the Missions: Nonprofit, For-Profit, and Public Hospitals Sponsored by the Center for Health, Science and Public Policy February 9, 2006 Does the ownership of a hospital make a difference in the type of service and quality of care that patients receive? This was the question posed by a Center for Health, Science and Public Policy theory-practice seminar held on February 9, 2006. The event brought together academics and practitioners in the field of health law and policy to discuss whether health care and services differed between non-profit, for-profit and public hospitals. Opening the discussion was Professor Jill R. Horwitz of the University of Michigan Law School, who presented empirical research comparing the kind of services provided by non-profit, for-profit and public hospitals when examined from the standpoint of profitability. She argued that the data shows when it comes to providing profitable services, hospitals behave differently based on who owns them. For-profit hospitals, Horwitz said, are more likely to offer highly profitable services, such as open heart surgery, and less likely to provide unprofitable services, such as emergency psychiatric care. She concluded that the results are the opposite for non-profit and government-run hospitals. Horwitz also presented findings that demonstrated how the mix of hospital ownership in any given community affects the type of services offered to community members. For instance, her studies show that if an area has private, non-profit and public hospitals, the non-profit and public hospitals are likely to offer more services than usual in an effort to stay competitive with the private hospitals in the area. Commenting on Horwitz’s presentation were Alan D. Aviles, president and chief executive officer of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, and Christopher M. Jedrey, a health care attorney with the law firm of McDermott, Will and Emery based in Boston. Aviles noted that Horwitz’s research highlighted the drawbacks of for-profit hospitals. “Owners of for-profit hospitals have a fiduciary responsibility,” he said, “but is it to the shareholders to maximize profit per quarter, or is it to the public to carry out a public mission?” Jedrey added that studies that look at profitability of health care services, such as Horwitz’s work, is a good way of understanding the culture of health care, the industry’s failures and how to remedy them. The discussion was moderated by Brooklyn Law School Professor Dana Brakman Reiser, an expert in the field of non-profit law, who served as a Legal Fellow in the Office of the General Counsel of Partners HealthCare System, Inc., a non-profit health care entity, before joining the faculty in 2001.
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