Quality of care differences by ownership in United States renal dialysis facilities.

Recent studies of patient outcomes in the United States have shown mixed conclusions regarding the effect of for-profit ownership on treatment quality. To test whether outcome quality differs across ownership types for patients being treated for end stage renal disease, a cross-sectional study was performed using data from 180,913 end stage renal disease patients receiving center based hemodialysis in 1996. Results indicated that patients in for-profit renal dialysis facilities had slightly higher mortality during the study period than patients in not-for-profit facilities, after controlling for patient case mix and market type. For profit ownership seems to affect not only treatment inputs, according to previous research, but also patient outcomes, as indicated by the results here.