A Panel Data Analysis of the Relationship between Publicness and Profitability of Public Hospitals: Focused Medicaid Patients

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between publicness and profitability of national university hospitals using panel regression data. The data was obtained from balancing accounts and annual reports in 12 national university hospitals for the period of 2008 through 2010. As a result of the investigation, first, operating margin is negatively associated with ratio of medicaid inpatients in publicness indicators. In general, national university hospital is a high proportion of patients who are severe disease and pay high medical fee. Second, normal profit to gross revenues is positively associated with medical social work and negatively associated with ratio of medicaid in inpatients. Above results lead us to a conclusion that government should balance relationship between publicness and profitability and support finance, administration in national university hospitals. This study, as far as we know, is the first one to use the panel regression approach in analyzing the relationship between publicness and profitability of national university hospitals in Korea. Accordingly, the results may have many points to be revised, and expect as many possible to be suggested many researches in the future.