Ohio hospitals provided $2.6 billion in community benefit in 2008, an 18 percent increase over the prior year, according to a report from the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA).
Community benefit is defined as the dollar amount that the state’s hospitals provided in charity care, Medicaid subsidies and activities within the community. Hospitals are required by the federal government to show benefit to their communities to justify their tax-exempt status.
Community activities, a bucket that includes low-cost medical services, educational programs and medical research, accounted for the largest portion — $1.2 billion — of the total amount.
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One hundred eighty-five Ohio hospitals submitted data for the 2008 report, which is the latest year for which data is available, according to the OHA.
The question of what constitutes “community benefit” has raised controversy in recent years, as different hospitals include different categories of expenditures. “Variations in the activities nonprofit hospitals define as community benefit lead to substantial differences in the amount of community benefits they report,” the Government Accountability Office reported in 2008.
Better defining the term has become a pet issue for Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican. Grassley has argued that neither the IRS nor Congress has done a good job in establishing criteria for the tax exemption not-for-profits now enjoy.
However, the OHA modeled its report after guidelines from the Catholic Health Association (CHA). The Internal Revenue Service has adopted the same CHA standards for nonprofit hospital filings with the agency.
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More than 350,000 Ohioans worked in the state’s hospitals in 2008, with 194,000 of that amount representing full-timers. Five of the state’s top 11 employers are hospitals or health systems, according to OHA.
