Religious Hospitals and Poorer Health Outcomes: A Case Study Using Hospital Performance Ratings

Amid state and federal initiatives to bolster healthcare practitioners' religious freedom, the impact of hospital religious affiliations on health outcomes has become a pertinent question. Despite the significance of this issue, there appears to be a lack of research examining the potential differences in health outcomes between religiously affiliated and secular hospitals. Addressing this gap, our exploratory study utilizes health outcome data from 291 California hospitals from 2016 to 2020. We evaluate health outcomes across a spectrum of interventions and events, accounting for variables such as the category of health condition (eg, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, pulmonary, pancreatic). We find evidence that hospital funding partially moderates the relationship between religious hospitals and health outcomes. While there are no differences in health outcomes between religious and secular hospitals at the lowest levels of revenue, as revenue increases, religious hospitals have more adverse health outcomes than their secular hospital counterparts. These results highlight the need for further investigation into how institutional priorities and resource allocation in religious hospitals may affect patient care, particularly as hospital revenue increases.