Evaluating the Financial Impact of Critical Access Hospital Conversion Over Time

Funder:	Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP)
Research center:	University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center Phone: 612.624.6151
Lead researcher:	Astrid Knott, PhD , 612.624.3566, knott008@umn.edu
Project completed:	August 2004
Topics:	Critical Access Hospitals and Rural Hospital Flexibility Program Health care financing

Using Medicare cost report data, this project will analyze changes in several key financial and organizational indicators that may be affected by CAH conversion, including: hospital discharges; revenue: Medicare outpatient revenue, Medicare inpatient revenue, Medicare inpatient revenue per adjusted discharge, and total facility revenue; expenditures: annual salary per FTE, number of employees, capital expenditures, interest expense, depreciation expense, and Medicare inpatient costs per adjusted discharge; financial structure: debt to asset ratio, donor and government support; profitability: total profit and profit margin; and service offerings: swing beds, Skilled Nursing Facility beds, and home health services. CAHs values on these measures prior to their conversion will be compared to their levels after conversion, and trends in these measures for hospitals that converted to CAH status will be compared with those of the comparison group of small rural hospitals that had not converted to CAH status at a specific point in time. Annual reports will be produced describing the financial status of CAHs and the results of our financial analyses.

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