April 10, 2025- The American Hospital Association (AHA) and Catholic Health Association of the United States released a new report showing the value of benefits that nonprofit hospitals and health systems deliver to their communities. The findings reinforce that the entire hospital field goes above and beyond to advance health by meeting the unique needs of their communities — whether by providing financial assistance for patients in need, supporting groundbreaking research to discover future cures, training the health care workforce, running community health programs, or absorbing below cost reimbursement from means-tested government programs, such as Medicaid. Since every community is different, the benefits and services hospitals provide are similarly unique and tailored to those community needs.
Nonprofit hospitals, which make up a majority of U.S. community hospitals, are required by law to identify the range of challenges faced by their communities through input from residents, support community programs and services aimed at addressing these issues, and publicly report data on these community investments. Nonprofit hospitals report these benefits to the IRS through Form 990 Schedule H (the focus of today’s report), which groups them into several different categories. It is important to take a comprehensive view of community benefits and the many ways nonprofit hospitals are impacting the health of their communities, rather than focusing only on one area, such as financial assistance.