Purpose – As hospital costs continue to rise, increasing attention is being paid to the way these organizations are and should be managed. This attention typically comes in the form of focus on costs of services, quality (often measured through mortality rates) and length of stay. Hospital...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically how operational performance and contextual factors contribute to differences in overall patient care costs across different hospitals. Design/methodology/approach – Administrative data are employed from a sample of hospitals in...