Financial Structures and Policies of Healthcare Facilities
The changing medical landscape has led to changes in the roles and structure of most rural hospitals. These changes have mostly been influenced by urban facilities that form chains and networks of operation and coordination in offering medical care for profit. Financially, the structure and policies of these two types of medical facilities differ. A great majority of rural hospitals are owned by the government, while some are owned by various non-profit organizations. The government and the non-profit bodies fund these healthcare facilities.
These rural healthcare facilities tend to depend mostly on Medicaid and Medicare patients. The financial funds of these hospitals are run either by the government or the respective bodies that own the facilities (Finkler & Ward, 2006). These funds are used in maintaining the facilities and service provision aimed at benefiting the locals by offering affordable healthcare charges. These facilities operate on a non-profit financial policy and most of these rural hospitals are contract managed (Finkler & Ward, 2006).
The governments’ responsibility may be at the state level, county level or under a regional authority. On the other hand, most urban chains of healthcare facilities that offer services for profit are mainly owned by some public sector entities that do not form part of the local governmental authority. These entities act as direct investors in these urban facilities (Gapenski, 2008).
These entities make direct investments in to these healthcare facilities through their contributions made in to the hospitals’ financial funds. A large number of these urban facilities are organized on a for-profit basis and are very competitive in nature. They offer quality services at a competitive price in relation to their competitors.
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