Healthcare facilities: non-profit versus for-profit
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Identify a nonprofit health care organization and a for-profit health care organization of your choosing. Answer the following:
a) Summarize the types of services provided, clientele served, and provider groups involved.
b) Compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of each organization from patient, provider, administrator, and third-party payer perspectives.
c) Provide at least 2 suggestions for each organization to minimize the identified weaknesses.
d) Summarize which organization you would rather be apart of, using rationale.
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Solution Summary
The expert examines non-profits versus for-profits organizations for healthcare facilities.
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Introduction
In the United States, hospitals make up the largest health care organizations in the country. Private hospitals are often and are classified as for-profit (FP) or non-profit (NP) institutions. However, the majority of the hospitals within the United States are non-profit. Additionally, most hospitals were founded by and continue to operate under charitable organizations. Although many local community hospitals with no religious affiliations operate as non-profits, a large number of NP organizations have a religious or faith-based affiliation. Many community hospitals-some of the U.S' best research and teaching facilities are non profit ones (Guy, 2009; Feigenbaum, 2013). An example of a non-for-profit hospital used for this purpose, is John Hopkins (JH) in Baltimore Maryland, and its for-profit counterpart example is William Beaumont Hospital (WB) in Royal Oak, Michigan(Best, 2013).
Not For Profits (NPs)
Johns Hopkins Hospital is a NP, acute care hospital. The hospital was rated the top non-profit hospital in the United States, with a rating of 100 based on a survey of more than 300 people. The smart rating is an unbiased score that incorporates expert ratings by the US News as well as Thomson Reuters as a quantitative rating based on Medicare data(Best, 2013) The data is related to patient experience, staff-patient communication, staff-communication, care outcome, and the number of cases performed for the most common procedures. 83 percent of those surveyed indicated that they would definitely recommend JH; and was considered far better than the average for all Hospitals (Best, 2013).
NP hospitals such as John Hopkins, were created to serve the poor, to be humanitarian, serve social services, and environmental causes. Their income is channeled into programs and services that are geared at meeting the needs of the poor and under-served of society including but not limited to: legal services, medical, food, housing, water, education and other related issues. Non-profit hospitals were formed with the sole intention of servicing and responding to the needs of the poor. As a result, they are exempt from taxes. As much as 90 percent of the hospitals in the United States accept charitable donations, because they attend to social services, and care needs of the poor, and are for all intensive purposes, non-profit institutions (Feigenbaum, 2013).
Non-profit health care organizations such as hospitals also conduct fundraisers to secure donations and government grants. In fact, the federal government is a major supporter of NP research projects, which creates an advantage when applying for federal funding (Guy, 2009). Although, this is rare, they can use surplus funds if available, to then service more patients, create new wings, and invest in related research, new technology and equipments and improve programs and social needs to help the poor.
Services
Non-profits serve the poor, and have been even known to finagle and finance care for the poor and indigent by overcharging those who can afford care in order to subsidize services for the poor. In contrast, for-profits serve predominantly paying patients and prefer to not serve nonpaying patients. This behavior leaves NPs the burden of receiving and servicing even more non-paying, poor patients to serve and less paying patients from which they can subsidize their care (Guy, 2009; Feigenbaum, 2013). Through their NP public health services, they extend free and at times very little (donation) screening and immunization clinics, needle exchanges, HIV/AIDS prevention and education services and hospice care for the poor and indigent of society.
Non-profit through their medical as well as public health affiliated programs serve communities, especially the poor and indigent, medical specialties, and overall, they strive to bring health care to those who cannot afford it (Guy, 2009; Feigenbaum, ...
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