Huft Justin, Guardino Katrina
University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA.
Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA.
Inquiry. 2025 Jan-Dec;62:469580251350813. doi: 10.1177/00469580251350813. Epub 2025 Jun 24.
Amid state and federal initiatives to bolster healthcare practitioners' religious freedom, the impact of hospital religious affiliations on health outcomes has become a pertinent question. Despite the significance of this issue, there appears to be a lack of research examining the potential differences in health outcomes between religiously affiliated and secular hospitals. Addressing this gap, our exploratory study utilizes health outcome data from 291 California hospitals from 2016 to 2020. We evaluate health outcomes across a spectrum of interventions and events, accounting for variables such as the category of health condition (eg, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, pulmonary, pancreatic). We find evidence that hospital funding partially moderates the relationship between religious hospitals and health outcomes. While there are no differences in health outcomes between religious and secular hospitals at the lowest levels of revenue, as revenue increases, religious hospitals have more adverse health outcomes than their secular hospital counterparts. These results highlight the need for further investigation into how institutional priorities and resource allocation in religious hospitals may affect patient care, particularly as hospital revenue increases.
在州和联邦支持医疗从业者宗教自由的倡议背景下，医院宗教附属关系对健康结果的影响已成为一个相关问题。尽管这个问题很重要，但似乎缺乏研究来检验宗教附属医院和世俗医院在健康结果方面的潜在差异。为了填补这一空白，我们的探索性研究使用了2016年至2020年加利福尼亚州291家医院的健康结果数据。我们评估了一系列干预措施和事件的健康结果，并考虑了诸如健康状况类别（如心血管、胃肠道、肌肉骨骼、肺部、胰腺）等变量。我们发现有证据表明，医院资金部分调节了宗教医院与健康结果之间的关系。在收入最低水平时，宗教医院和世俗医院的健康结果没有差异，但随着收入增加，宗教医院的健康结果比世俗医院更差。这些结果凸显了有必要进一步调查宗教医院的机构优先事项和资源分配如何可能影响患者护理，特别是随着医院收入增加。
