Chicago, IL (AHN)-A study published in the journal Health Affairs finds that for-profit nursing homes and hospitals on average provide an inferior quality of care compared with their nonprofit counterparts.

Bradford Gray, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute-a nonprofit research group-and lead study author, says, "The overall pattern found differences between nonprofits and for-profits regarding cost, quality and accessibility."

According to the Reuters report, in what was called the biggest review of the literature to date, the authors reported that eight studies found nonprofit hospitals have lower mortality rates, versus one study finding for-profits have lower rates of death.

The review found that nonprofit hospitals are also better at keeping costs down.

For nursing homes, the majority of studies find quality of care better at nonprofits, although for-profit nursing homes are superior at keeping costs down.

The study also suggests that nonprofits provide benefits that are not easy to quantify. For example, there is evidence that for- profits are more likely to mark up prices to maximize revenue and to have complaints lodged against them.

The study says there is also evidence that nonprofits have a "spillover effect" in markets where they co-exist with for-profits, meaning that they "enhance the quality and trustworthiness" of for-profits in a given market.