Demonstrating the Community Benefit of Hospitals
The majority of hospitals in the U.S. are non-profit or tax-exempt, and to keep that status these facilities must demonstrate their benefit to the communities they serve. The Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA), a new mandate under the Affordable Care Act, provides an opportunity for people to engage their local hospitals, not only in assessing and planning programs to address the health needs of residents but also implementing and evaluating the success of those programs over time.
Hospitals provide benefit to their communities in many ways, such as donating resources to community organizations, assisting in food banks, providing financial assistance to low income patients, linking patients to related care (such as dental, vision or mental facilities) and more. However much of that benefit still revolves around the notion of health care access – not necessarily the social determinants of health and preventative strategies, said Jessica Curtis, Director of the Hospital Accountability Project at Community Catalyst, in a recent webinar with County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, Understanding the Hospital Community Benefit Requirement and the Community Health Needs Assessment.
A recent report showed that hospitals devoted more than 85 percent of their community benefit spending to access issues such as charity care – far more than what was spent on preventative initiatives. “Only 5 percent was spent on community health improvements,” Curtis said.
Getting feedback from the community and focusing on the many health factors that play a role in a community’s health and wellness, as illustrated in the County Health Rankings model, are key parts of the CHNA process. After conducting a CHNA, hospitals must develop an implementation strategy to meet their community’s needs – something “to be negotiated at the local level,” Curtis said. That gives community partners, including public health, a key role to play in working with hospitals to focus their plans on the best ways to meet the needs of patients and their community.
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