Union Density and Hospital Outcomes

The authors address the hospital outcomes of patient satisfaction, healthcare quality, and net income per bed. They define union density as the percentage of a hospital's employees who are in unions, healthcare quality as its 30-day acute myocardial infraction (AMI; heart attack) mortality rate, and patient satisfaction as its overall Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems score. Using a random sample of 84 union and 84 nonunion hospitals from across the United States, multiple regression analyses show that union density is negatively related to patient satisfaction. Union density is not related to healthcare quality as measured by the AMI mortality rate or to net income per bed. This implies that unions per se are not good or bad for hospitals. The authors suggest that it is better for hospital administrators to take a Balanced Scorecard approach and be concerned about employee satisfaction, patient satisfaction, healthcare quality, and net income.