Specialty Hospitals: Geographic Location, Services Provided, and Financial Performance;Report to the Congress

摘要

Specialty hospitals, which tend to focus on patients with specific medical conditions or who need surgical procedures, represent a small but growing segment of the health care industry. Such hospitals are not an entirely new phenomenon, as children's and other types of specialty hospitals have existed for decades. However, the recent growth in specialty hospitals has been controversial because it has involved a new genre of hospitals. In contrast to earlier forms of specialty hospitals, this new genre is characterized by hospitals that are often for-profit and frequently owned, in part, by some of the physicians who work in them. Advocates of these newer specialty hospitals contend that the focused mission and dedicated resources of specialty hospitals allow physicians to treat more patients needing the same specialty services than they could in general hospitals and that, through such specialization and economies of scale, the potential exists to improve quality and reduce costs.