Characterizing hospital inpatients: the importance of demographics and attitudes.
To compete effectively, hospital administrators must understand inpatients who are involved in hospital-choice decisions more clearly. To this end, a methodology is presented to measure and assess the importance of inpatients' personal attributes in predicting hospital selection. Empirical results show that demographic characteristics are poor--but attitudes are useful--segmentation variables that delineate differences between two particular hospitals' inpatients. More generally, the survey method and statistical procedures outlined are applicable (with slight modification) to markets with a greater number of competitors.
D003657:Decision Making; D003710:Demography; D006764:Hospitals, Community / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009518:New York; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D010361:Patients; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires