Profit vs. public welfare goals in investor-owned and not-for-profit hospitals.

A study of goal formation in a matched sample of investor-owned and not-for-profit hospitals was conducted to determine differences in the perceptions of employees regarding their hospitals' commitments to patient/community welfare goals versus profit maximization. These perceptions were compared to available operating data for the same hospitals. While the investor-owned hospitals as a group generally were found to emphasize patient/community welfare values less than their not-for-profit counterparts, this did not hold true when matched pairs were analyzed. In some of the matched subsets, the not-for-profit hospitals were much more profit-oriented than the investor-owned hospitals. This research reveals that strong patient/community service values do not universally characterize not-for-profit hospitals, and conversely investor-owned hospitals cannot always be characterized as profit maximizers.