Publication Date: March 2nd, 1993
Publication Type(s): Working Paper
Topic(s): Hospitals and Clinics, Physicians
Author(s): Christianson, J., Moscovice, I., Hartley, D., Chen, M.
Despite the key role that physicians play in rural hospitals, very little is known about the structure of rural hospital medical staffs. In this paper, we utilize survey data collected from 465 rural hospitals in eight states to describe the configuration of hospital medical staffs. Using Guttman scaling techniques, we find that a hierarchical pattern is present in the data. As active medical staff size increases, specialty capability is expanded in a systematic and predictable way. It means that the “level of specialization” on rural hospital medical staffs can be represented on a single scale in empirical analyses.