Defining (Refining?) “Community Benefit”

A closer look at non-profit hospitals.  

Hospital care is perhaps the only major American industry that has been dominated by non-profit companies. It is true that several significant for-profit hospital corporations have emerged over the past several years but the hospital landscape is still largely non-profit. These non-profit facilities can be sorted into two general categories; public hospitals, fully or partially supported by tax revenues and private non-profit organizations. Hospitals in the latter group support themselves by a combination of patient care revenues, income from ancillary services (e.g. parking), and philanthropy. Additionally, they are exempt from local, state, and federal taxes and, in exchange, they are supposed to provide so called "community benefit". In other words, through our elected officials, we have determined that these hospitals provide benefits to our communities that are at least equivalent to the taxes paid by for-profit companies. However, there is a problem. There is no one accepted definition of "community... continue reading...