September 11, 2025- New analysis released by the American Hospital Association (AHA) shows that tax-exempt hospitals provided nearly $150 billion in total benefits to their communities in 2022 alone; the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available from the Internal Revenue Service.
This represents a nearly 50% increase in community benefit spending over five years from 2017 to 2022. A large portion of these benefits — representing nearly 7% of nonprofit hospitals’ total expenses, or approximately $65 billion — was for financial assistance for patients in need, including absorbing underpayments from Medicaid, CHIP and other federal, state, or local government programs for the low-income. Tax-exempt hospitals’ and health systems’ total community benefits were 15.1% of their total expenses in 2022.
All of America’s hospitals, regardless of ownership status, continue to provide a comprehensive range of benefits, programs and essential services to their communities despite a range of challenging headwinds, including workforce pressures, rising costs of providing care and federal spending reductions. 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.
Continue Reading from the American Hospital Association.