A comparison of the performance of for-profit and nonprofit U.S. psychiatric inpatient care providers since 1980.

OBJECTIVE

The authors synthesized evidence from a systematic review of the literature reporting substantiated performance differences between private for-profit and private nonprofit psychiatric inpatient care providers in the United States since 1980. They also compared reported differences in performance between nonprofit and for-profit inpatient psychiatric care providers with reported differences between nonprofit and for-profit providers of other types of health care.

METHODS

Studies were located by means of computerized bibliographic searches and follow-up searches of studies cited in the articles located in the computerized search. The analysis included peer-reviewed studies that compared the performance of for-profit and nonprofit health service providers, including inpatient psychiatric services, in the areas of access, quality, cost-efficiency, and amount of charity care on the basis of quantitative data collected after 1980. The studies were classified in one of three categories according to the study conclusion: for-profit superiority, nonprofit superiority, or no difference or mixed results.

RESULTS

Almost all studies (with one exception) found that the nonprofit psychiatric providers performed as well as or better than their for-profit counterparts. The proportion of studies reporting performance superiority of nonprofit versus for-profit psychiatric inpatient providers was greater than the proportion of studies reporting the same conclusion for providers of all other types of health care taken together.

CONCLUSIONS

On the basis of data collected since 1980, nonprofit psychiatric inpatient care providers in the United States had superior performance on access, quality, cost-efficiency, and amount of charity care, compared with for-profit providers. Caution is warranted in pursuing public policies that permit or encourage the replacement of nonprofit psychiatric inpatient care providers with for-profit providers of these services.