Leon E Moores1, Amy Landry2, S Robert Hernandez3, Jeff M Szychowski4, Nancy Borkowski3. 1. Inova Medical Group, Pediatric Specialists of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Uniformed Services University, Fairfax, Virginia. 2. Department of Health Services Administration, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama (UAB). 3. Department of Health Services Administration, UAB. 4. Department of Biostatistics, UAB; and.
Abstract
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Little work has been done comparing the performance of hospitals with physician CEOs versus nonphysician CEOs, despite the ease of identifying this characteristic and extant leadership theories suggesting a relationship between technical expertise and success in leading highly technical organizations. We performed a detailed analysis of several widely accepted measures of clinical and financial performance across a randomly selected group of U.S. acute care hospitals with more than 40 beds and found no statistically significant differences between the two groups. The 30-day acute myocardial infarction mortality rate showed a positive statistically significant difference in the bivariate analysis (p < .001), but the effect was nullified in the multivariable regression analysis.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Little work has been done comparing the performance of hospitals with physician CEOs versus nonphysician CEOs, despite the ease of identifying this characteristic and extant leadership theories suggesting a relationship between technical expertise and success in leading highly technical organizations. We performed a detailed analysis of several widely accepted measures of clinical and financial performance across a randomly selected group of U.S. acute care hospitals with more than 40 beds and found no statistically significant differences between the two groups. The 30-day acute myocardial infarction mortality rate showed a positive statistically significant difference in the bivariate analysis (p < .001), but the effect was nullified in the multivariable regression analysis.