title: Hospital mergers and closures: survival of rural hospitals.
abstract: There are two major models to save financially failing rural hospitals: (1) expanding through an affiliation or merger with other hospitals to increase the utilization and diversity of services, or (2) downsizing by employing the limited-service model and providing only emergency and primary care service with limited acute care. This study investigates hospital mergers and closures from 1990 to 1992 using the American Hospital Association's (AHA's) data from the Annual Survey of U.S. Hospitals. The presence of potential scale and scope economies among merging and closing hospitals prior to the merger or closure suggests that rural hospitals are operating at a size level that has great potential for achieving scope and scale efficiencies through mergers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Administration and Human Resources, University of Scranton, PA 18510-4597, USA.
authors.forename: U T
authors.initials: UT
authors.lastname: Sinay
mesh_terms: D000573:American Hospital Association; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D006271:Health Facility Closure / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006273:Health Facility Merger / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017721:Hospital Costs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006780:Hospitals, Rural / Q000191:economics* / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D020415:Personnel Downsizing; D012044:Regression Analysis; D014481:United States