[DashRattlesnake]

That's true, but removing the profit motive of the facility removes one major incentive for coordinated, large scale corruption like this. Other incentives (like production-based compensation being gamed by unscrupulous individuals) will have to be dealt with in other ways.

[sageikosa]

So without profit, the operating metric will be what exactly?

[gurneyHaleck]

I can see it now:

  "This graph depicting
   revenue reveals that
   the maternity ward is
   quite the cost center. It
   should be going up and 
   to the right!

   Smithers, why are there
   so few pregnancies? We
   need more in-patients,
   otherwise our overhead
   starts eating away at 
   our profits."

  "Well, sir, I suppose 
   there aren't as many
   teen pregnancies as 
   there used to be, and
   with the benefit of 
   modern procedures, the
   pregnancies we do see
   are fairly uncomplicated..."

  "Uncomplicated?! Why,
   everyone knows live
   vaginal births are the
   devil's causeway. Those
   infants can't be as 
   healthy as these so-
   called 'doctors' seem
   to believe. See to it
   that more tests are 
   performed. I'm sure we
   can find something wrong 
   with some of these 
   freeloaders."

...enter Dr. Nick.

  "Hi, everybody!"

[sageikosa]

You'll just need to have permission before you can get pregnant; cost problem solved (except for the expanding bureaucracy to manage the rules and operations of maternity).

[bandrami]

In healthcare we have this amazing thing called "outcomes".

[danso]

Er...are you questioning the existential purposes of the non-profit sector in general, or just non-profit healthcare?

[sageikosa]

Just trying to point out that human action without profit requires something else to account for the costs; otherwise there is no way to judge comparatively how limited resources should be applied. So if there isn't going to be profit driven activity, what will be the metric for success? If it is "outcomes", then we should start plowing everything we've got into it. Of course, should that mean we stop plowing resources into other endeavors? Do we make a vote of it? A law case?

[nommm-nommm]

Patient outcomes?