Article at a glance:
Should US nonprofit hospitals offer luxury health care—premium suites, catered meals, round-the-clock private nurses—to affluent customers? Some critics claim that the very idea is contrary to the nonprofits' mission: providing quality health care for all. Yet the new revenues such services could generate may well enable these hospitals to improve the quality of the service they offer to all patients, especially those with the fewest resources.
The take-away
At a time when most nonprofit hospitals barely break even, premium services could attract money that would allow these institutions to extend their mission and serve their communities more effectively.