Variation, Overlap, and Stability in Defining Safety Net Hospitals.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

The lack of universally accepted definitions for safety net hospitals (SNHs) has made it difficult to effectively design policies to support these hospitals and the populations they serve.

Objective

To evaluate the overlap, variation, and consistency across different definitions for SNH status.

Design, setting, and participants

This retrospective cohort study used a hospital year-level dataset on short-term acute care US hospitals from 2014 to 2022. Hospital-level and area-level measures were used to define SNHs. Hospital characteristics under each definition, overlap across definitions, and stability of SNH samples produced by each definition from were described. Data analyses were performed from August 2024 to June 2025.

Exposure

Nine hospital-leve

SUBMITTER: Chatterjee P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12311695 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature