Closure among U.S. community hospitals, 1976-1980: a description and a predictive model

Closure of U.S. community hospitals during the years 1976-1980 is analyzed by describing the distributional patterns of closings among hospitals classified by certain institutional characteristics: bed size, number of facilities and services, ownership, teaching status, location in a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) or in a non-SMSA, and location in one of the nine United States Census Divisions. The method of Cox regression analysis is used to show that each of these institutional characteristics is independently, and significantly, associated with closure, and to estimate the strength of the association. On the basis of this analysis, a theoretic model is constructed for estimating the relative probability of closure for any community hospital with a given set of these institutional characteristics.