Hospitals represented a growing $371.7 billion industry in the United States in 1997 and were responsible at that time for about 34% of the nation's health care expenditures. In 1999, the total portion of U.S. national health expenditures devoted to hospital care was estimated to have reached $401.3 billion.
There are several types of hospitals: acute care (i.e., defined to be those hospitals with average lengths of stay less than 30 days); psychiatric hospitals; chronic rehabilitation; nursing homes; and Federal (e.g., Veterans Administration Hospitals). The major issues linked to the entire hospital industry may be summarized as access or availability, costs, and (broadly defined) quality of care. The effective management of each involves operations research and management science. The key issues and trends that are associated with these concepts are as follows.
ACCESS
In 1965, two government-sponsored health insurance plans were created in the United States, Medicare and Medicaid....
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Brailer, D.J. and Pierskalla, W.P. (1992). “The Impact of Hospital Congestion on Mortality,” Proceedings of TIMS International Conference, Helsinki, Finland, July.
Burns, L.R., Bazzoli, G.J., Dynan, L., and Wholey, D.R. (1997). “Managed Care, Market Stages, and Integrated Delivery Systems: Is There A Relationship?” Health Affairs, 16(6), 204–218.
Carlisle, D.M. et al. (1992). “HMO vs Fee-for-service care for older persons with acute myocardial infarction.” American Jl. Public Health, 82, 1626–1630.
Connor, R.A., Feldman, R.D., Dowd, B.E., and Radcliff, T.A. (1997). “Which Types of Hospital Mergers Save Consumers Money?” Health Affairs, 16(6), 62–74.
Lewin Group (1999). “The Balanced Budget Act and hospitals: The dollars and cents of Medicare payment cuts.” Report released through the American Hospital Association, Washington, DC.
Luft, H.S. (1981). “Trends in medical care costs: Do HMOs lower the rate of growth?” Medical Care, 18, 1–16.
Mann, J.M., Melnick, G., Bamezai, A., and Zwanziger, J. (1997). “A Profile of Uncompensated Hospital Care, 1983–1995.” Health Affairs, 16(4), 223–232.
Manning, W.G. et al. (1987). “Health insurance and the demand for medical care: Evidence from a randomized experiment.” American Economic Review, 77, 251–277.
Menke, T.J. (1997). “The Effect of Chain Membership on Hospital Costs.” Health Services Research, 32(2), 177–196.
Miller, R.H. and Luft, H.S. (1994). “Managed care plan performance since 1980.” Jl. American Medical Association, 271, 1512–1519.
Miller, R.H. and Luft, H.S. (1997). “Quality of Care: Does HMOs Do Better Quality?” Health Affairs, 16(5), 7–25.
Neuman, P. and Langwell, K.M. (1999). “Medicare's choice explosion? Implication for beneficiaries.” Health Affairs, 18(1), 150–160.
Pierskalla, W.P. and Wilson, D. (1989). “Review of Operations Research Improvement in Patient Care Delivery Systems,” University of Pennsylvania study for R.W. Johnson Foundation.
Retchin, S.M. and Brown, B. (1991). “Management of Colorectal Cancer in Medicare Health Maintenance Organizations.” Jl. General Internal Medicine, 5, 110–114.
Romano, P.S. et al. (1999). “Grading the graders. How Hospitals in California and New York perceive and interpret their report cards.” Medical Care, 37, 295–305.
Schwartz, M. et al. (1996). “A primer: Health care databases, diagnostic coding, severity adjustment systems and improved parameter estimation.” Annals Operations Research, 67, 23–44.
Ware, J.E. et al. (1986). “Comparison of health outcomes at a Health Maintenance Organization with those of fee-for-service care.” Lancet, Issue 8488, 1017–1022.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this entry
Cite this entry
Ozcan, Y.A., Ozgen, H., Morey, R.C. (2001). Hospitals . In: Gass, S.I., Harris, C.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_426
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_426
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-7827-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-0611-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive