A study of 1.17 million hospital patients found that for-profit hospitals had about 11 more deaths per 1,000 medical admissions than nonprofits. 71% of their nurses said their workloads were unsafe.
Most people don’t choose their hospital. The ambulance goes to the nearest one, or the insurance plan decides. Few patients know whether that hospital is run as a nonprofit or by a company that answers to shareholders. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania compared 143 for-profit and 798 nonprofit hospitals across 10 US states, using records from more than 1.17 million Medicare patients and surveys of 17,368 bedside nurses, to see whether ownership tracks with who survives a hospital stay. They also tested one specific explanation: how many patients each nurse is asked to care for.
u/sevenclutch — 6 days ago