Hospital Care in the 100 Largest Cities and Their Suburbs, 1996-2002: Implications for the Future of the Hospital Safety Net in Metropolitan America

Over 1400 general medical or surgical hospitals located in the nation's 100 largest cities and surrounding suburbs provide inpatient, outpatient, emergency and specialty care for the 151 million residents of these metropolitan areas who require hospital care each year. This report examines patterns of hospital care in these areas using data from American Hospital Association annual surveys for the years 1996, 1999 and 2002. The hospital data was analyzed by two measures: ownership (for-profit, non-profit and public) and level of poverty (low, medium and high) for urban and suburban areas.

Our review describes the volume of overall inpatient and outpatient care, including emergency department visits; hospital characteristics such as bed size, average length of stay, and occupancy rate; and three types of specialty care, including the number of level 1 or level 2 trauma centers, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) beds, and positron emission tomography (PET) scanners. Additionally, we examined patient payer mix, net patient revenues per hospital, and the average operating and total margins of hospitals by community poverty levels. (Excerpt)