Legislation defines charity care for IL hospitals

Hospitals to get millions in taxpayer refunds

Hospitals flout charity aid law

California Union Demands Hospitals Stop Price Gouging Consumers

Regional Medical Center at Memphis Chooses Connance to Improve Management of Agencies

Success Factors For Creating Accountable Care Organizations

How To Make Comparative Effectiveness Work

IRS to survey exempt organizations about 2010 tax filing burden

CO Senate passes hospital charity-care bill

The Growing Charity Challenge – Form 990 and Health Reform | Healthcare Finance News

Articles in category: Community Benefit

1. County wants CaroMont to pay Explore Gaston Gazette (Jul 21 2012) Community Benefit Winters points to figures such as the $128 million in patient revenue that CaroMont reported making in fiscal 2011. “In the last 20 years and even more in the last 10, the situation has changed and the hospital is in a much stronger financial ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment

2. N.J. lawmakers approve bill requiring for-profit hospitals to post financial records Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Jun 27 2012) Collections , Community Benefit , Cost Reduction , Debt Management , Improving Collections , Point-of-Service Collections , Vendor Management The bill (A2143) passed the Senate in March and now heads to Gov. Chris Christie, who will decide whether to sign it. Any hospital that seeks a share of the state charity care funds to treat uninsured patients would have to disclose sources of income, business holdings and salaries of its top officers along with other information that nonprofit companies must file with the Internal Revenue Service, according to the bill. The state Department of Health and Senior Services would collect and post the information on its website. (Read Full Article)

   Comment

3. Legislation defines charity care for IL hospitals Explore healthleadersmedia.com (May 31 2012) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction Not-for-profit hospitals in Illinois facing the specter of paying millions in property taxes were granted a reprieve Tuesday when the state Senate passed legislation that will allow hospitals to apply a much broader definition for what qualifies as charity care. The legislation sets a clear formula for how much free care and services hospitals must provide to qualify for tax breaks, ending nearly 10 years of wrangling on the issue. It requires that hospitals provide an equal or greater amount of free or discounted services to low-income patients each year than their annual estimated property tax liability to qualify for an exemption. (Read Full Article)

   Comment

4. Opinion: Tax man cometh for hospitals that flout charity-care mission Explore healthleadersmedia.com (May 1 2012) Charity , Community Benefit , Cost Reduction When hospitals send bill collectors to patient bedsides, file suits against the sick, all while erecting sparkling new buildings as they raise prices for their care, observers wonder whether the money is coming before the mission. In Illinois, an apparent lack of charity care by nonprofit hospitals has resulted in some big-name medical centers losing their tax-exemptions, leading state lawmakers in the next month to come up with a definition of charity care to justify tax exemptions before even more nonprofit hospitals lose their tax exemptions and are forced to pay taxes. Some see it as just the beginning of legislation to spread nationwide. (Read Full Article)

   Comment

5. Fund charity care mission by filling hospital beds Explore Hospital Impact (Apr 25 2012) Collections , Community Benefit by Rob Turner Continuing our three-part series on reasons for filling beds, I recall my early days of healthcare administration when the debate was always robust concerning margin versus mission. Clearly these concepts are not mutually exclusive. As you'll remember, there are three levels of buy-in that must be ingrained in our organization: Full beds create job security Full beds allow us to do more charity work Full beds allow us to create better defined contribution (DC) plans Charity work is a necessary component of being a part of the American healthcare system. Whether your company characterizes charity as purposed or accidental, we all provide a certain amount of intentional and unintentional benevolent care. For clarification sakes I will discuss the two categories of charity work, but also submit that being full with a greater number of paying patients creates the ability to do a larger volume of charity cases regardless of intent. Simply put, charity work is an act that makes your organization a better community partner. Intentional charity is self-explanatory. Generally we have a contractual obligation to take no-pay patients or we make a conscious decision to take a patient without a payor source. Back-end or unintentional charity work usually happens as a result of no benefits, exhausted benefits or lack of co-pay. Sometimes it's the ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment

6. Most N.C. hospitals are slim on charity care Explore charlotteobserver.com (Apr 22 2012) Collections , Community Benefit , Cost Reduction In Illinois, the state Department of Revenue last year denied property tax exemptions to three hospitals that were found to be spending less than 2 percent of their patient revenue on charity care. That followed a 2010 ruling by the Illinois ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   N.C. Hospital Association

7. Hospital Union Proposes Increase In Amount of Revenue Used For Charity Care Explore turnto23.com (Apr 17 2012) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction The Union's proposed Charity Care Act of 2012 would require nonprofit hospitals to spend a minimum 5 percent of revenue on charity care. (Read Full Article)

   Comment

8. CO Senate passes hospital charity-care bill Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Mar 21 2012) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction , Payment Models A hospital charity-care bill received overwhelming final approval from the Colorado Senate on Tuesday after its sponsor worked with healthcare facilities to ease their potential financial burdens. Senate Bill 134, sponsored by Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, requires hospitals to inform all uninsured patients about payment-plan programs and to discount the amount charged to anyone that makes less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level—$57,625 annually for a family of four. It also prohibits hospitals from billing any patients in that income range more than the lowest cost they bill insurance companies for the same procedures. (Read Full Article)

   Comment

9. NJ releases charity care funding levels Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Mar 7 2012) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction The state Department of Health and Senior Services this week released hospital-specific funding levels for state safety-net programs, including charity care, the Hospital Relief Subsidy Fund and the Graduate Medical Education Fund. The total level of funding—$961 million—is set to remain unchanged in fiscal 2013, but the state did alter the funding formula used to distribute the money. Under the new formula, hospitals will receive 90 percent of the money they received last year. The remaining 10 percent of the $675 million in charity care funding will be distributed based on documented increases or decreases in the levels of charity care provided at a given hospital. (Read Full Article)

   Comment

10. Hospital gap for rich, poor Explore chicagobusiness.com (Mar 3 2012) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction , Revenue Cycle In August, the Department of Revenue stripped the exemption from Northwestern Memorial's Prentice Women's Hospital, Edward and a downstate hospital in part because they provided charity care worth less than 2 percent of net patient revenue in ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment

11. IL Gov. lifts moratorium on review of hospital property taxes Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Mar 2 2012) Community Benefit Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday drew a hard line on negotiations with the state's hospitals over how much free care they must provide to qualify for tax breaks, lifting a moratorium on the Department of Revenue's review of hospitals seeking charity-care exemptions on their property taxes. The governor's decision comes after negotiations between the state's nonprofit hospital and Illinois officials reached an impasse on Wednesday, failing to meet a March 1 deadline to come to terms on new rules that define what constitutes charity care. Department of Revenue officials will resume deliberations today on pending applications filed by as many as 16 hospitals seeking property-tax exemptions. (Read Full Article)

    Comment

12. Quinn resumes tax exemption reviews for hospitals Explore chicagobusiness.com (Mar 1 2012) Community Benefit (Crain's) — The governor raises the stakes in stalled negotiations over new rules on nonprofit hospital tax-exempt status. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Provena Health   Toni Preckwinkle

13. As talks stall, Preckwinkle prods Quinn over hospital tax exemptions Explore chicagobusiness.com (Feb 29 2012) Community Benefit (Crain's) — The County Board president turns up the heat on stalled negotiations over new rules exempting nonprofit hospitals from property taxes. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   University of Michigan Health System   Provena Health   Toni Preckwinkle

14. Hospital group to take charity tax exemptions fight to Illinois Legislature Explore chicagobusiness.com (Feb 28 2012) Community Benefit (Crain's) — Barring a last-minute deal with the Quinn administration over the tax-exempt status of nonprofit hospitals, a powerful hospital lobbying group has lined up a prominent downstate Democrat to propose legislation to expand what counts as charity. State Senate Majority Leader James Clayborne Jr., D- East St. Louis, has agreed to sponsor the Illinois Hospital Association's proposal, which would overrule a two-year-old Illinois Supreme Court decision that tightened the requirements for non (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   University of Michigan Health System   Provena Health   John Colombo

15. IL hospitals hope for broader 'free healthcare' definition Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Feb 22 2012) Community Benefit State officials have never said exactly how much charity care is necessary for those tax breaks, but in 2010 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Provena Covenant Medical Center in Urbana should be stripped of its nonprofit property tax exemption for 2002 because the hospital didn't provide enough charity care—just 0.7 percent of its revenues that year. The Illinois Department of Revenue used the case in its justification for stripping three more health systems of their nonprofit status: Northwestern Memorial's Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago, Edward Hospital in Naperville and Decatur Memorial Hospital in Decatur. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Provena Covenant Medical Center

16. Hospitals flout charity aid law Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Feb 13 2012) Editors Choice , Feature Story , Collections , Community Benefit , Cost Reduction , Debt Management , Improving Collections , Patient Friendly Billing , Revenue Cycle , Vendor Management New York's charity care system, partly financed by an 8.95 percent surcharge on hospital bills, is one of the most complicated in the nation, but many states have wrestled with aggressive debt collection by hospitals in recent years. Like New York, several passed laws curbing hospitals' pursuit of unpaid bills, including Illinois, California and Minnesota. But a new study of New York hospitals' practices and state records finds that most medical centers are violating the rules without consequences, even as the state government ignores glaring problems in the hospitals' own reports. (Read Full Article)

    Comment

17. Cost Spotlight: Another example of self-referrals leading to higher health care spending Explore AHIP Coverage (Jan 18 2012) Charity , Community Benefit , Cost Reduction The Baltimore Sun's Jay Hancock is a man on mission. His mission -- shine a glowing spotlight on the practice of physician self-referrals and the impact on health care costs. Continue reading → (Read Full Article)

    Comment

18. Report: IL hospitals' charity care growing Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Jan 13 2012) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction A report from the Illinois Hospital Association says hospitals are providing an increasing amount of charity care. The hospital association's report, released today, includes information on more than 100 Illinois hospitals that file annual community benefit reports with the state. Those hospitals provided $561 million in free and discounted care in the most recent fiscal year. That was a 124 percent increase since 2005. (Read Full Article)

    Comment

19. IRS to survey exempt organizations about 2010 tax filing burden Explore Healthcare Finance News (Dec 1 2011) Community Benefit , Patient Friendly Billing The Internal Revenue Service is conducting a voluntary survey of randomly selected tax-exempt organizations to learn how to reduce the time and cost burden associated with preparing the 2010 Form 990 and related forms, schedules and worksheets. Responses to the Tax Exempt Organization Burden Survey will be used for statistical or research purposes only. The IRS has launched the survey because it hears from tax-exempt organizations that preparing and filing tax returns is "time consuming and expensive." No sticky read more (Read Full Article)

    Comment

20. Economy challenges Catholic health care ministry Explore healthleadersmedia.com (Dec 1 2011) Charity , Community Benefit , Cost Reduction As lawmakers debate how they will trim budgets everywhere and reduce the federal deficit, Catholic health care organizations, like the wider health care industry, continue to deal with the challenges of delivering medical care with fewer resources. Like others, they are looking for new ways to treat poor and uninsured patients, bring physicians to rural areas despite a nationwide shortage, and continue to survive in a rapidly changing landscape. In addition, Catholic health care faces challenges the rest of health care does not: challenges of maintaining identity grounded in the mission of its founders to care for the poor and uninsured. (Read Full Article)

    Comment

21. State may put non-profit hospitals on tax rolls, with incentives Explore chicagobusiness.com (Nov 29 2011) Collections , Community Benefit (Crain's) — The move would be an about-face from the get-tough attitude of just three months ago, when officials ignited a firestorm by stripping charitable status from three hospital properties. (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   John Colombo

22. California Union Demands Hospitals Stop Price Gouging Consumers Explore Business Insider (Nov 25 2011) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction , Patient Friendly Billing With the average cost of health care projected to skyrocket to $24,000 per year by 2020, a California health care worker union ramped up efforts this week to stop hospitals from overcharging consumers. (Read Full Article)

    Comment

23. University Hospital May Reduce Charity Care if Kentucky Merger Fails Explore Becker's Hospital Review (Nov 21 2011) Community Benefit , Cost Reduction (Read Full Article)

    Comment

24. What's Next for Illinois Non-Profit Hospitals and Their Tax-Exempt Statuses? Explore Becker's Hospital Review (Nov 10 2011) Collections , Community Benefit , Cost Reduction In August, the Illinois Department of Revenue denied the property tax-exempt status of three Illinois non-profit hospitals: Northwestern Memorial's Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago, Edward Hospital in Naperville and Decatur (Ill.) Memorial Hospital. The IDR's denials were made because it deemed the three hospitals did not provide a sufficient amount of charity care for the poor and indigent populations to warrant an exemption on their property taxes. In 2007, Northwestern Memorial and Edward Hospital showed charity care as 1.85 percent and 1.04 percent, respectively, of their net patient revenues, while Decatur Memorial reported charity care as 0.96 percent of its net patient revenues. (Read Full Article)

    Comment

1-24 of 52 // 1 2 3 »