Financially Fragile Rural Hospitals: FIGURE 1.

Financially distressed rural hospitals in four states.

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 dramatically changed the payment environment for institutional providers of non-acute health services by mandating a shift in Medicare reimbursement of outpatient, home health, and skilled nursing services from the traditional cost-based approaches to prospective payment. Although they were designed to slow health care spending, these Medicare payment reforms, pa...

General hospitals, specialty hospitals and financially vulnerable patients.

In the past decade, the rapid growth of specialty hospitals focused on profitable service lines, including cardiac and orthopedic care, has prompted concerns about general hospitals' ability to compete. Critics contend specialty hospitals actively draw less-complicated, more-profitable patients with Medicare and private insurance away from general hospitals, threatening general hospitals' abili...

Optimal Monetary Policy in a Financially Fragile Economy

This paper studies optimal monetary policy in an economy where …rms use external funds to …nance operational costs. It is shown that direct and indirect cost channels for monetary policy arise when …rms can default on borrowed funds. The direct cost channel calls for milder contractions in the face of in‡ationary pressures. The indirect cost channel, on the other hand, encourages policy conserv...

Bioethics activities in rural hospitals.

Web Figure 1