Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Committee Chair

Earl Godfrey

Abstract

This study examines how the financial performance of hospitals in the state of Florida impacts the quality of care. This study used data from 2017-2019 to evaluate how the number of hospital readmissions – a proxy for care quality – are associated with and vary in relation to the stability of the financial resources held by the hospital. The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP), a Medicare value-based purchasing program, uses a mandatory pay-for-performance process that was initiated to decrease the 30-day hospital readmission rate. Hospitals with high readmissions are held accountable and financially encouraged to increase their quality of care and coordination. Hospitals are considered financially responsible for patients that are readmitted within 30 days after their original discharge. For this research, linear regression was used to analyze the impact of these 30-day readmissions on financial measures. T-tests were used to evaluate the differences between a hospital’s readmission based on their size and magnet status. In addition, a moderation analysis was incorporated to determine whether hospital size and magnet status impacted the relationship between readmissions and financials. The hospital sample ranged from 21 to 2,745 beds and was categorized as small and large hospitals using 283 beds as the threshold for classification, based on the distribution of hospitals within the State of Florida’s dataset. The data was collected from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This study aimed to determine if quality of care, which is being measured by the patient being readmitted, impacts the financial v performance of a hospital. Of the eleven hypotheses within the study, five were determined as statistically significant at the model level, while another five were statistically significant at the main effect with one interaction being recognized as significant. These findings, collectively, suggest that indicators of higher-quality patient care, as reflected in readmission rates, are associated with variation in hospital financial performance, therefore providing evidence of a meaningful relationship between a hospital’s care quality and financial stability without implying direct causation.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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