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Cultivating physician relations to enhance rural hospital utilization.

Rural hospitals are searching for new strategies to enhance utilization in view of constraints introduced by prospective payment and other environmental pressures. Developing physician relations is an approach that is reportedly leading to better hospital-physician collaboration and subsequently to improved utilization. This paper examines rural hospital-physician relations and the association with utilization. The findings suggest that rural hospitals emphasize quality care as well as diagnostic and treatment equipment procurement as methods for building relationships with physicians. These strategies are correlated with efforts to build a larger medical staff. Higher rural hospital utilization, in terms of occupancy, discharges and patient days provided, is associated with a larger medical staff. The results suggest that rural hospitals' attempts to cultivate physician relations have the potential for making significant differences in utilization outcomes. However, the linkages between utilization and physician relations are complex and require further research.