Becker’s Hospital Review looks at what makes an institution a “community hospital”?
It says that Truven Health Analytics, for example, “divides hospitals into five comparison groups when forming its 100 Top Hospitals list: major teaching hospitals, teaching hospitals, large community hospitals, medium community hospitals and small community hospitals.
But the broader definition of community hospital goes beyond the number of beds and medical-scho0l connections or absence of same.
Important in the definition would be: the care-access provided, the geographical locati0n of the facility; governance structure; partnerships; the hospital’s economic role in the community, and such intangibles as how members of community feel about it, with a “sense of community” making community hospitals stand out from academic medical centers.
The Becker’s piece also looks at the future of such institutions in the context of changing reimbursement and other policies.