For-profit hospitals, sometimes referred to as alternatively investor-owned hospitals, are
investor
An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Type ...
-owned
hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...
s or
hospital network
A hospital network is a public, non-profit or for-profit company or organization that provides two or more hospitals and other broad healthcare facilities and services. A hospital network may include hospitals in one or more regions within one o ...
s. Many of the for-profit hospitals are located in Europe and
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
, with many of them established particularly in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
during the late twentieth century. In contrast to the traditional and more common
non-profit hospitals, they attempt to garner a profit for their shareholders. The highest charging hospitals in the US are for profit, according to a study published in the journal ''
Health Affairs
''Health Affairs'' is a monthly peer-reviewed healthcare journal established in 1981 by John K. Iglehart; since 2014, the editor-in-chief is Alan Weil. It was described by ''The Washington Post'' as "the bible of health policy".
Abstracting an ...
'' in 2015.
United States
In the United States, the three largest such firms are
Hospital Corporation of America
HCA Healthcare is an American for-profit operator of health care facilities that was founded in 1968. It is based in Nashville, Tennessee, and, as of May 2020, owns and operates 186 hospitals and approximately 2,000 sites of care, including sur ...
,
Tenet (formerly NME), and
HealthSouth
Encompass Health Corporation, based in Birmingham, Alabama, is one of the United States' largest providers of post-acute healthcare services, offering both facility-based and home-based post-acute services in 36 states and Puerto Rico through its ...
. HealthSouth, as the third-largest U.S. national chain, is also the leading provider of rehabilitation services. For profit
Psychiatric Solutions
Psychiatric Solutions, Inc. was an operator of psychiatric facilities in the United States. They were bought out by Universal Health Services.
Joey Jacobs and Bryce DeHaven, former executives of Hospital Corporation of America for over 20 years, ...
was the largest provider of psychiatric services in the nation, until they were bought out by
Universal Health Services
Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS) is an American Fortune 500 company that provides hospital and healthcare services, based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. In 2021, its annual revenues were $12.6 billion.
Company history
Alan B. Miller, ...
in 2010.
A conceptually related institution is the for-profit
HMO
In the United States, a health maintenance organization (HMO) is a medical insurance group that provides health services for a fixed annual fee. It is an organization that provides or arranges managed care for health insurance, self-funded heal ...
, which now comprises the predominant means of delivering
medical services
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profess ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Advocates of such institutions claim they are able to provide better care at lower
cost
In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in whic ...
due to higher efficiency. It is also said that, in the free market, hospitals have an incentive to do better due to competition. Non-advocates argue that for-profit hospitals promote the
medical-industrial complex and can lessen physician-patient interactions.
Detractors, however, claim that the relative success of for-profit medical providers arises from their positioning themselves in the medical marketplace in such a manner as to offer mainly profitable care services for a largely affluent and insured clientele whilst avoiding unprofitable care areas. Critics thus claim, for example, that for-profit hospitals specialize in such highly lucrative fields as
medical rehabilitation, elective/plastic surgery, and
cardiology
Cardiology () is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular h ...
while avoiding provision of loss-making services such as
emergency medicine which in turn caters mainly to the indigent. Analogously, critics of for-profit HMOs argue that such firms disproportionately insure healthy people, while simultaneously eschewing chronically ill patients, who must then by default be cared for disproportionately by public insurance schemes and non-profit providers—thus a so-called "dumping" of undesirable patients.
Canada
For-profit hospitals have also been criticised by elements of the Canadian medical establishment as providing inferior care at higher cost. Se
this commentaryin the ''
Canadian Medical Association Journal
The ''Canadian Medical Association Journal'' (French ''Journal de l'Association Médicale Canadienne'') is a peer-reviewed general medical journal published by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA). It publishes original clinical research, anal ...
'' an
this editorialin ''
The New England Journal of Medicine
''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one.
Hi ...
''.
India
For-profit hospitals in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
have recently come under increasing media scrutiny. In an article by the ''
Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'', they spoke about the problems with "corporate hospitals" and senior surgeons being told to sell surgeries to their patients even if they weren't needed. In one instance, a doctor was told he would be sacked if he didn't have enough patients to operate on.
References
* Adapted from the
Wikinfo
The history of wikis began in 1994, when Ward Cunningham gave the name "WikiWikiWeb" to the knowledge base, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it.
The wiki went public in March 1995, the date used ...
article: http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.php?title=For-profit_hospital
{{DEFAULTSORT:For-Profit Hospital
Private hospitals