title: Should physician-owned single-specialty hospitals continue to exist?
abstract: Physician-owned single-specialty hospitals (SSHs) account for only about 200 hospitals out of approximately 5500 hospitals nationwide, and yet they are at the center of a raging debate. The ability of community SSHs to lower costs and improve quality while threatening the viability and existence of community full-service hospitals is at the center of the hotly contested debate. A review of prior studies on this issue does not reveal competitiveness in the marketplace between SSHs and community full-service hospitals. In fact, the debate on the relatively newness of SSHs creates a number of questions not entirely answered by the research, which prevents a real understanding of their value to society and thus a resolution of the raging debate.
authors.affiliation: School of Business Administration & Technology, Northcentral University, Prescott Valley, AZ, USA. executivehealthcare@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Lewis W
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Mustard
mesh_terms: D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D006782:Hospitals, Special / Q000191:economics / Q000600:supply & distribution; D010067:Ownership; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010820:Physicians; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D014481:United States