Ownership and characteristics
All hospitals surveyed tell into three categories
1.private for-profit
2.non-profit which were all apart of a missionary or religious organization (28 percent) ; and
3.governmental
Within the private category , 36 percent had a CEo who was also the founder , or a member of the founder’s family (43 percent), and in each case , a major shareholder .There were no diffuse shareholders in the real sense, or at least not what we might encounter when studying the dynamics of governance in a pure corporate structure ownership in family-owned hospitals was usually limited to a few family members. The relevance of good governance in this case did not necessarily relate to the protection of the rights of minority shareholders (because there were none), but rather to protect the interests of other stakeholders, such as employees , patients , doctors , major suppliers , creditors and the community. Our in depth interviews emphasized these issues, with questions directed to investigate the dynamics of relationships between owners/managers/board members and other stakeholders in the hospitals