Kr. Desai et al., HOSPITAL CONVERSIONS FROM FOR-PROFIT TO NONPROFIT STATUS - THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY, Medical care research and review, 55(3), 1998, pp. 298-308
The authors examined, on a case-by-case basis, the community impact of
15 for-profit hospitals that converted to nonprofit status. These for
-profit conversions have been occurring in numbers comparable with tho
se of nonprofit conversions (i.e., nonprofit hospitals that convert to
for-profit status), but have attracted far less attention. For each f
or-profit conversion, the authors compared the change in uncompensated
care with the loss to the local community in property tax revenue. In
11 of the 15 cases, the conversion was followed by some level of incr
ease in uncompensated care. However, only three of these conversions p
roduced enough additional uncompensated care to offset the loss in pro
perty tax revenue to the community. This analysis, while only a starti
ng point for addressing the community impact of for-profit conversions
, suggests that for-profit conversions do not uniformly promote the we
lfare of the communities where they occur.