Virginia Research Day 2021

Medical Student Research Cl inical

02 The Value Surgical Services Bring to Critical Access Hospitals

Nathanael N Hoskins, OMS III; Marco A Cunicelli, OMS IV; Wade Hopper, OMS II; Robert Zeller, OMS I; Ning Cheng, PhD; Tom Lindsey, DO, FACOS Corresponding author: Nhoskins@vcom.edu

Via College of Osteopathic Medicine-Virginia Campus (Nathanael N. Hoskins & Marco A. Cunicelli) Via College of Osteopathic Medicine-Carolinas Campus (Wade Hopper, Robert Zeller; Tom Lindsey) Via College of Osteopathic Medicine-Auburn Campus (Ning Cheng)

Purpose: Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) serve rural populations and receive government subsidies to compensate for their relatively high overhead costs and low occupancy rates. Twenty-nine percent of all hospitalizations in the United States include a surgical procedure, and hospitalizations involving surgery accounted for nearly half of all hospital revenue in 2011. This study aims to determine the value surgical services bring to CAHs and their impact on the viability of these facilities. Methods: Public access financial data from the American Hospital Directory (AHD) about each hospital's revenue and surgical services offered was analyzed. Excel was utilized to randomly select 300

Conclusions: Net percent profitability in CAHs is directly correlated to the number of surgical services offered. CAHs providing three or more surgical services showed tighter group variance, and thus more predictable profits than those offering less surgical services.

CAHs from a pool of 1350 CAHs based on a 95% confidence interval and a 5% margin of error. Linear regression models were fit to the data, assessing the relationship between net income (both gross and percent) and number of surgical services offered per hospital using Statistical Product and Services Solutions (SPSS) Statistics. Findings: From 300 sampled Critical Access Hospitals, those that offered surgical services experienced on average 2.0% greater profitability than those that did not offer any surgical services (+1.6% vs. -0.4% respectively). Each additional surgical specialty offered provided $778,442 of value and an additional 0.8% net income.

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