October 10, 2023- Even in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic, all hospitals, regardless of ownership type, continued to provide a comprehensive range of benefits, programs and essential services to their communities.
New analysis released by the American Hospital Association (AHA) shows that tax-exempt hospitals provided more than $129 billion in total benefits to their communities in 2020 alone; the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available. The analysis calculates that tax-exempt hospitals’ and health systems’ total community benefits were 15.5% of their total expenses in 2020, based on data from the Internal Revenue Service.
This report demonstrates that hospitals never retrenched during the pandemic, and, in fact, the amount of community benefit exceeded the prior year by nearly $20 billion due to the field’s commitment to their communities. Nearly 7% of not-for-profit hospitals’ total expenses — amounting to $57 billion — was attributed to financial assistance for patients and underpayments from Medicaid and other means-tested government program.