The researchers who worked on this study were Sloan, Taylor, Gabriel Picone of the University of South Florida and Duke graduate student Shin-Yi Chou.

Sloan noted in an interview that for-profit companies are becoming increasingly involved in services that were once handled exclusively by government and nonprofit entities, including prisons, schools and medical clinics.

"The argument for for-profits has been, "Let's bring in efficient business practices. The nonprofits and the public facilities are inefficient, people haven't been given the incentives to be efficient, and we're going to bring in modern methods to this very old and important but not-yet- up-to-date industry.' But what you see here is that the for-profits brought in good methods for getting higher reimbursements, but they didn't necessarily bring in the methods that would save the public programs money."

Sloan said the data from these two studies could help Congress decide on ways to keep Medicare solvent. "This and Social Security are two issues that a president and Congress, if they could figure out what to do, would put them in history as very effective public servants," Sloan noted.

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Contact: Keith Lawrence
Keith@dukenews.duke.edu
919-681-8059
Duke University
28-Jan-1999