https://mailchi.mp/f1c5ab8c3811/the-weekly-gist-october-28-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

Drawing on a report published by the North Carolina State Health Plan for Teachers and State Employees, a recent Kaiser Health News article shines a light on the lack of transparency in financial reporting of not-for-profit hospitals’ community benefit obligations.

The report claims many North Carolina hospitals—including the state’s largest system, Atrium Health—show profits on Medicare patients in their cost report filings, while at the same time claiming sizable unrecouped losses on Medicare patients as a part of their overall community benefit analyses.

The Gist: These kind of reporting discrepancies draw attention to the controversial issue of whether not-for-profit hospitals provide sufficient community benefit to compensate for their tax-exempt status, which was worth nearly $2 billion in 2020 for North Carolina hospitals alone. 

Greater transparency around charity care, community benefit, and losses sustained from public payers could go a long way toward shoring up stakeholder support for not-for-profit institutions at a time when their political goodwill has deteriorated. Hospitals should be proactive on this front, as political leaders increasingly train their sites on high hospital spending in the current tight economic environment.