The Faces of Competition: A Comparative Analysis of Irvine Medical Center, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Patient safety is number one in hospitals. Every staff member that comes into contact with a patient should always have the question, “Will the patient be safe?” in the back of

"To continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value” (Jointcommission.org, 2015). These requirements are regimented in the National Patient Safety Goals and are enforced via surveys and internal inspections to ensure that healthcare institutions abide by the safety mechanisms put in place to facilitate the optimal patient outcomes and environments.

Throughout the history of the United States, the economics of the health care system has experienced many changes. There are many factors to consider that has been the drive behind many of the changes within the health care system. Medical and surgical technologies are some factors that relate to the changes in health care. Besides these factors, allocating sources to fund health care services has always been the most critical factor. One might consider the economic term supply and demand when looking at the history of health care economics and the primary funding source. Health care funding

In 1997 University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) merged its two public hospitals with Stanford’s two private hospitals. The two separate entities merged together to create a not-for-profit organization titled UCSF Stanford Health Care. The merger between the health systems at UCSF and Stanford seemed like a good idea due to the similar missions, proximity of institutions, increased financial pressure with cutbacks in Medicare reimbursements followed by a dramatic increase in managed care organizations. The first year UCSF Stanford Health Care produced a profit of $22 million, however three years later the health system had lost a total of $176 million (“UCSF-Stanford Merger,” n.d.). The first part of this paper will address reasons

Since most specialty procedures are inpatient services, EMC’s inpatient occupancy rate suffers. The occupancy rate for Emanuel Medical Center – fifty percent – is far below that of its competitors and industry benchmarks. To accompany this, EMC (on average) receives a lower reimbursement for in-patient Medicare services per patient seen in comparison to its competitors. A result such as this is correlated with directly to the fewer amount of specialty services that EMC offers. In order for Emanuel Medical Center to be able to compete with other hospitals in its service area, it is imperative that EMC evaluates what services they currently offer and are capable to offer in the future to add value to the hospital, increase its revenue stream, and expand its patient mix. Currently, Emanuel Medical Center has not succumbed to its increasing financial pressurealthough EMC has had a negative operating income for five straight years. A negative operating income places EMC at a disadvantage because it limits the hospitals ability to renovate its aging building or hire new specialists to offer revenue enhancing procedures. EMC’s competitors, on the other hand, have large sources of revenue due to their mergers with large healthcare networks such as Catholic Healthcare West. Another competitor, Kaiser Permanente Modesto Medical Center, has extremely large financial resources due to the fact

Patients want and expect to receive high quality care. Nurses want to provide the best care possible to their patients and like everybody else; want a pleasing job environment. Hospitals, on the other hand, are expected to provide a safe environment to patients, have enough nursing staff and remain profitable (Keller, Dulle, Kwiecinski, Altimier & Owens, 2013). The ultimate goal is to improve quality of care and patient safety across the United States; therefore, all the different interests of these major stakeholders should be taken into

Merger of Hospital A and B and its consolidation into PRMC was essential as Hospital A was crippled with losses for 3 previous years and was also forecasting losses in the coming year. Hospital B was struggling with an aging facility. Furthermore, given that both the hospitals were in the same community and therefore essentially serving the same community, they were competing both: for the same patients, as well as, the clinical staff. The merger, allowed the new PRMC to reduce the healthcare costs, address the shortage of healthcare personnel and improve the delivery of healthcare by reducing the duplication of services and providing wide variety of services to the small community of 60,000 in southeastern part of Idaho.

The intention of this research paper is to further understand the financial statement of four distinct hospitals located in the San Diego, California County. An analysis of the financial report for Sharp HealthCare, Scripps Health, Tri-City HealthCare, and Palomar Health will be briefly discussed individually on each important financial outcome’s Such as: assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses, hospital debt, and investments. To analyze further, a break down between the hospitals assets, liabilities, and revenue will be compared in the paper.

Downtown Los Angeles residents boast vigorous lifestyles in one of the most bustling cities in the world. Located downtown in South Park on Grand Ave. is California Hospital Medical Center (CHMC), administering care to the surrounding neighborhoods for the over 100 years. CHMC is rated 99% nationally for its level of quality healthcare services.

There are many different forms of competition among health care organizations. Some of them are the prices of services, different co-pays someone will have to pay out of pocket, lower premiums, they have to be competitive in the quality of the service in which they perform daily. The health care competition is being advertised every day. The competitive nature of business cause them to reach out to the community. The health care industry has to fight for the approval of the community, the government, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and of course the stake holders as well as future investors.

Stanford University Hospital is one of the most innovative hospitals on the West Coast. It is run by a progressive University dedicated to reinvestment in healthcare strategies and improving technological foundations within its leading position in the healthcare industry. Currently, it is being driven by goals to improve patient satisfaction and clinical productivity.

Hospitals also compete for physicians by offering more highly trained supportive staff and/or better equipment. Hospitals are more likely to compete for patients by providing more services, better amenities, or discounted prices. There is a strong competition for cutting edge technology and medical talent locally and globally. Hospitals also have to compete for inclusion in insurer’s provider networks. Insurance plans compete for cost to payers, quality of provider networks, credentialing screening, and quality assessment procedures.

All Hospitals, is comprised of 4,487 hospitals with data for all independent variables, more than 100,000 residents in its counties or metropolitan area, are non-federal, and present in the 1988 American Hospital Association Survey. Rival Sample, contains only non-merging hospitals from the All Hospitals sample with two or more rivals within 7 miles during 1988. The reasoning behind two or more rivals is that if non-merging hospital has less than two rivals then it cannot experience a rival merger. While the rationale for 7 miles is due to this small area when adjacent hospitals merge, it is reasonable to expect an effect on the prices of rivals. The Rival Sample is then broken down into two subdivisions: 118 hospitals with merging rivals (NMW) and 759 hospitals without merging rivals (NMWO). The need for the distinction between NMWs and NMWOs is because

Issues related to a lack of patient safety have been going on for a lot of years now. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, there has been a national emphasis on cultivating patient safety. Patient safety is a global issue, that touches countries at all levels of expansion and is one of the nation's most determined health care tests. According to the Institute of Medicine (1999), they have measured that as many as 48,000 to 88,000 people are dying in U.S. hospitals each year as the result of lapses in patient safety. Estimates of the size of the problem on this are scarce particularly in developing countries; it is likely that millions of patients worldwide could suffer disabling injuries or death every year due to unsafe medical care. Risk and safety have always been uninterruptedly been significant concerns in the hospital industry. Patient safety is a very much important part of our health care system and it really

The hospital industry consist of privately and publicly owned and operated hospitals and medical facilities. The financial backgrounds of these assorted categories of organizations are sizeable and contrasted. Therefore, industry ratios are to be considered and evaluated from a greater proportion in order to identify with the financial data involving the industry as a whole (Dunn & Becker, 2013). Based on analysis and evaluation of the financial ratios gained from Nasdaq and Google Finance, it is apparent that the hospital industry is gradually rising and supports increase in profitability. These ratios are divided into several categories: Growth rates, financial strength, valuation, profitability, efficiency, dividends, and management effectiveness.