Nontraditional services provided by nonprofit and for-profit hospitals: Implications for community health / Practitioner application

A study examines a 1993 survey of all 4,977 private medical and surgical hospitals in the US to determine the scope of disease prevention, health enhancement and palliative services provided by facility types geographic location and institutional ownership. Results show that church-operated and other nonprofit hospitals appear to provide a spectrum of palliative and preventive health services both for their patients and those in the local community. Given their apparent scope, these services could have an effort on the burden of disease and on illness prevention in many communities. With major changes anticipated in future healthcare delivery and the recent failures reported for many community health intervention programs, healthcare administrators need to focus on ways to integrate their services with other private and public health efforts.