60% of U.S. hospitals are nonprofit hospitals. The non-partisan Lown Institute estimates those institutions receive $30 billion in tax breaks each year. The institute recently evaluated nonprofit hospitals for their community benefits. They found that three-quarters received more in tax breaks than the hospitals spent on charity care or other community benefits. More
And an April report by the Lown Institute, a health care think tank, said more than 1,350 nonprofit hospitals have “fair share” deficits, meaning the value of their community investments fails to equal the value of their tax breaks. “With so many Americans struggling with medical debt and access to care, the need for hospitals to give back as much as they take grows stronger every day,” said Vikas Saini, president of the institute.
60% of U.S. hospitals are nonprofit hospitals. The non-partisan Lown Institute estimates those institutions receive $30 billion in tax breaks each year. The institute recently evaluated nonprofit hospitals for their community benefits. They found that three-quarters received more in tax breaks than the hospitals spent on charity care or other community benefits. More
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According to Lown research, St. Luke’s University Hospital spent $16,364,000 more on charity care and community investments than the estimated value of its tax exemption. The other five St. Luke’s hospitals’ surpluses totaled nearly $12 million: Upper Bucks Campus ($5,810,000) Miners Campus ($2,994,000)Anderson Campus ($1,589,000) Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital ($754,000) Monroe Campus ($629,000). More
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However, a health-care think tank, Lown Institute, found that more than three quarters of the 1,773 nonprofit hospitals in the US it examined shortchanged communities by providing less charity care and investments than the value of their tax breaks. Its most recent Fair Share Spending report shows a total “fair share” deficit of $14.2 billion for those hospitals in 2020. More
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Hospitals still have a long way to go. A recent analysis by the Lown Institute, a health care think tank, found that more than three-quarters of nonprofit hospitals spent less on charity care and community investment than they reaped in tax breaks. More
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An April report from the Lown Institute, a think tank on health-care equity, said nonprofit hospitals are spending less on charity care than they receive in benefits from their tax-exempt status. More
“I think what's interesting to me about Saint Vincent Charity Medical Center is that they do really very well on our measures of clinical outcomes and of value, which is to say avoiding unnecessary treatments and, you know, being cost efficient in what they do,” Dr. Vikas Saini said. More
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"It’s an open secret that not all spending hospitals can claim as community benefits are actually meaningful for community health," the nonprofit's president, Vikas Saini, and policy analyst, Judith Garber, wrote. "The broad definition of community benefit — one of many loopholes in the U.S. tax code — allows hospitals to include spending on items that don’t directly address community health needs. That’s why we focused on the spending that matters most for local communities, some of which are losing tens of millions of dollars in property tax revenue to support nonprofit hospitals." More
“In the last 30 years, there’s been a huge increase in the amount of administrators in hospitals and the money that’s flowing through the health care system,” said Dr. Vikas Saini, a physician and president of the Lown Institute, a health care think tank.
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"Hospitals that serve working people tend to have lower margins, lower profits, and less of a cushion in the event of a crisis," said Dr. Vikas Saini, a physician and the president of the Lown Institute, a health care think tank. More
According to a new report by the Lown Institute, close to 80% of more than 1,700 nonprofit hospitals studied “spent less on charity care and community investment than the estimated value of their tax breaks.” The report also found that this so-called “fair share” deficit, which was $14.2 billion in 2020, was “enough to erase the medical debts of 18 million Americans or rescue the finances of more than 600 rural hospitals at risk of closure.” More