Hospital financial performance in the United States of America: a follow-up study.

To clarify and validate the factors that influence hospital profitability in the United States of America, we used a cross-sectional design to examine data for 1998. Several changes and government regulations introduced in the early 1990s influenced hospital performance. We included those variables to give a better understanding of the hospital payment system. Among the explanatory variables considered, geographic location, competition, hospital size and occupancy rate were identified as the main contributors to hospital profitability.