Geriatric services offered by hospitals: predicting services by internal and external community characteristics.
This article explores the role of hospitals in providing geriatric services and identifies associated community and hospital characteristics. The sample is 4571 community hospitals responding to the 1995 American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey. Most hospitals offer some geriatric services; the mean is 3.3. The dependent variable is an index of 13 geriatric services created from the AHA data. Independent variables are taken from the AHA survey, Area Resource File, and census data. Regression analysis explains fifteen percent of the variance. Hospital characteristics predicting provision of geriatric services are non-profit tax status, hospital bed size and system membership. Community characteristics predicting provision of geriatric services included higher population density, high percentage of county aged, and county nursing facility beds. Hospital characteristics yielded slightly higher predictive ability than did community characteristics. The findings suggest policies to increase hospital leadership in providing access to senior services require a multi-dimensional approach.
Evashwick
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Center for Health Care Innovation, California State University at Long Beach, 6300 State University Drive, Suite 270, Long Beach, CA 90815-4600, USA. cevashwk@csulb.edu
Swan
J H
JH
Smith
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D000368:Aged; D002391:Catchment Area, Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003631:Day Care, Medical; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000145:classification / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D006742:Hospital Bed Capacity; D006754:Hospital Restructuring / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006761:Hospitals / Q000145:classification*; D006788:Hospitals, Voluntary; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D009042:Motivation; D009096:Multi-Institutional Systems; D009735:Nursing Homes; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012380:Role; D014481:United States