The following year (the first year in which the IRS requirement was in effect), 65% of the institutions had published CBRs. At this point, many hospitals had designated website areas for addressing community benefit; additionally, many of the CBR were uploaded to these sites. They were more easily identifiable as well as more detailed than in the prior year.
Nevertheless, in both fiscal years examined, only a few hospitals (roughly 11%) had community benefit programs that encompassed all the areas set forth by the CHA and NACHRI for ideal programs. One such program is Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., which invested a great deal of resources toward incorporating community benefits into their hospital’s mission and culture.
We hope that the new IRS rules will serve as a call to action for nonprofit hospitals to become more committed to their communities and to drive investment in expanded community benefits, like improved health care access, health professional education, and preventive health services. Community benefits programs, if based on the health needs of each community, can serve as powerful tools for improving health outcomes.
Hospitals that actively work to address their community needs can serve as models for other institutions. Such a system will ultimately reduce the burden of disease and illness on individuals and communities.
This commentary appears in Pediatric News, an Elsevier publication. Dr. Rhonique Harris is the director of mobile health programs and executive director of public sector partnerships at Children’s National Medical Center, and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at George Washington University, both in Washington, D.C. Dr. Norrell Atkinson is a third-year pediatric resident in the community health track at that hospital. Dr. Harris and Dr. Atkinson said that they had no relevant financial disclosures.