Closed U.S. community hospitals, 1972–1978: Perspectives and trends

Abstract

This paper is a large-scale descriptive study of the 315 United States community hospitals registered with the American Hospital Association that closed permanently—merged hospitals are not included—in the 7-year period of 1972–1978. Using material drawn from the files of the American Hospital Association, we examined those hospitals within the framework of a series of parallel categories: the years in which the hospitals closed; closings by geographic region; closings by bed size; closings by ownership; and closings by location in metropolitan (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas) or nonmetropolitan areas. For each category, this study first describes the anomalous distribution of closings revealed by aggregate data for the entire period and then demonstrates the trends through time revealed by the pattern of these closings.