Associations Between Environment, Hospital Finances, And Patient Readmissions: Exploratory Analysis

Much of the variation seen in healthcare patient outcomes and hospital finances in the United States is unexplained. This study used fourteen separate data sources with information on resource capacity, hospital competition, and neighborhood socioeconomic status to construct models that attempted to characterize all domains related to the casual care pathway of patient outcomes. These models were used in regression analysis with two nationally available measures of hospital performance: hospital readmission rates and profit margins, as dependent variables. This analysis showed no or weak associations across all models, with the exception of associations between increases in hospital finances with information technology infrastructure and decreased competition in metropolitan areas