profit hospital

In order to retain their tax-exempt status, not-for-profit hospitals must provide some kind of community benefit. But defining what constitutes "community benefit" has been a constant source of trouble for these hospitals. Now the Catholic Health Association says it has developed a set of guidelines for planning, measuring, and documenting community benefits. The CHA also says that almost all of its 4,000 facilities have adopted these measures. The association hopes its guidelines could …

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has announced that it has become the first not-for-profit hospital system to comply fully with the strict reporting and internal control requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which applies to publicly-held companies and was designed to prevent Enron-scale financial catastrophes in that arena. While not-for-profits don't have to comply, experts say more of them are moving in the direction of fuller disclosure, assuming that the spotlight will be on …

The Government Accountability Office issued two hospital-related reports Friday. The first praises proposed changes in Medicare reimbursement for hospitals. The second says large not-for-profit hospital systems are doing better at overseeing executive compensation. CMS is considering adjusting inpatient DRG payments using national average cost-to-charge ratios, rather than basing them strictly on cost data as is done for outpatient payments, a strategy that the GAO says makes sense. CMS's …

It's been an eventful week for healthcare watchers. There were a number of noteworthy events, both good and bad. A large non-profit hospital chain, Catholic Healthcare West of San Francisco, announced a settlement in a class action suit over the rates it charges uninsured patients. Evidence--as if any were needed--that the litigation issue isn't going away any time soon. Earlier in …

A large non-profit hospital chain has settled a class action lawsuit filed over the prices it charges uninsured patients. Catholic Healthcare West, which operates 40 hospitals in California, Arizona and Nevada, has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum believed to total "hundreds of millions" of dollars. The suit accused CHW of charging uninsured patients up to five as times as much as those with insurance or access to Medicare or Medicaid. As part of the settlement, the hospital chain agreed …

Community Health Systems became the second largest for-profit hospital chain in the country yesterday, passing Tenet with the purchase of its seventy-second hospital. The chain announced yesterday that it has closed on the purchase of Baptist Memorial Hospital-Forest City in Forest City, Arkansas. The Brentwood, Tennessee-based Community Health specializes in rural, non-urban markets. In 2005 the chain reported revenues of $3.7 billion. HCA remains the largest for-profit chain in the …

> A serious bird-flu epidemic breaks out and spreads worldwide.

> Significant numbers of physicians stop taking Medicare after a fee cut.

> Bankruptcy of major for-profit hospital systems.

> A malicious virus infects a significant number of medical devices causing patient deaths due to inaccurate readings.

> The FDA regulates health information software.

> An outbreak of a hospital-centered bacterial infection, such as MSRA, becomes a …

2005 was also the year in which the issue of hospital profits moved to the front-burner. Critics have always raised questions about how well doctors do and the money non-profit hospitals make. But this year events became far more serious as hospitals became the subject of several lawsuits for allegedly over-charging the uninsured. The first class-action suits, filed by Mississippi attorney Dickie Scruggs, were largely unsuccessful but did produce settlements in a number of cases where …

The Providence Health system became the first non-profit hospital chain to settle charges that it failed to meet its obligation to provide charity care. The chain said it is has reached an agreement which will see it compensate uninsured patients who paid higher rates for treatment. The settlement is said to impact at least 10,000 low-income patients in Oregon. Mississippi-based attorney Dick Scruggs is involved in similar lawsuits against non-profit hospitals in 27 states. Scruggs gained …

> With governments worried about H5N1 and threatening to break the drug's patent, Roche says it is willing to license Tamiflu to other companies. The company also announced a new US production facility. Article

> Varian Medical Systems, a maker of x-rays and cancer treatments, announced new products, including Aria, a new oncology information management system. …