Non-profit multi-hospital organizations: challenges and prospects.

This study seeks to determine the relative importance of factors non-profit hospital administrators rely on in their decisions to join a non-profit multihospital organization (MO) and their assessments of an MO in satisfying these motives. A related objective of the study is to determine whether or not the administrators of different types of hospitals (i.e. general vs specialty, member of a national vs non-national MO and church-affiliated vs non-church affiliated) differ in their judgements. The analytical framework of the importance-performance technique is used in analyzing the data gathered from the top administrators of a nation-wide sample of hospitals in the USA. Results and implications of the study are discussed.