Hospitals and the provision of care to the aged: a cluster analysis.

As the American population ages, the hospital industry will undergo substantial restructuring to meet the increased demand for geriatric and long-term care services. Understanding this important trend, however, has been inhibited by limited research and the vast range of services that currently exists. This investigation develops empirically a classification schema of hospitals that reflects the mix of geriatric services they provide. The study also identifies the organizational and environmental characteristics of hospitals providing these geriatric service categories. Factor analysis, clustering, and analysis of variance were performed on a sample of 416 hospitals. Seven distinct groupings of hospitals that differed systematically on geriatric service mix and other contextual factors were identified.